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Introduction to CI/CD

CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment/Delivery) is a set of practices in software development that automates integration, testing, and deployment processes. It ensures faster feedback loops, reduces manual tasks, and improves code quality. Developers frequently merge code changes into a shared repository (CI), followed by automated deployment to production or staging environments (CD)

What is CI/CD?

CI/CD Overview

Continuous Integration (CI)

Continuous integration is the practice of integrating all your code changes into the main branch of a shared source code repository early and often, automatically testing each change when you commit or merge them, and automatically kicking off a build. With continuous integration, errors and security issues can be identified and fixed more easily, and much earlier in the development process.

Continuous Delivery (CD)

Continuous delivery is a software development practice that works in conjunction with CI to automate the infrastructure provisioning and application release process. Once code has been tested and built as part of the CI process, CD takes over during the final stages to ensure it's packaged with everything it needs to deploy to any environment at any time. CD can cover everything from provisioning the infrastructure to deploying the application to the testing or production environment.

What about Continuous Deployment?

Continuous deployment enables organizations to deploy their applications automatically, eliminating the need for human intervention. With continuous deployment, DevOps/software teams set the criteria for code releases ahead of time and when those criteria are met and validated, the code is deployed into the production environment. This allows organizations to be more nimble and get new features into the hands of users faster.

⭐ Within this course we will only focus on Continous Delivery, but you are free to experiment or expand😄!

While you can do continuous integration without continuous delivery or deployment, you can't really do CD without already having CI in place. That's because it would be extremely difficult to be able to deploy to production at any time if you aren't practicing CI fundamentals like integrating code to a shared repo, automating testing and builds, and doing it all in small batches on a daily basis.

Significance of CI/CD in Software Development

CI/CD is a set of practices that streamline the software development lifecycle by automating various processes. It ensures that code changes are integrated, tested, and deployed swiftly and consistently. The main goals are to improve collaboration, reduce risk, and accelerate software delivery.

How Does CI/CD Work?

  1. Automated Builds: Developers commit code changes to a version control system (e.g., Git). CI tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD) automatically trigger builds when changes are detected.

  2. Testing: Automated tests (unit, integration, and acceptance tests) run during the build process. Any failures are reported immediately.

  3. Artifact Generation: Successful builds produce deployable artifacts (e.g., Docker images, JAR files).

  4. Deployment Pipeline: CD pipelines orchestrate the deployment process. They include stages like staging, testing, and production.

  5. Automated Deployment: CD tools (e.g., AWS CodePipeline, GitOps) deploy artifacts to target environments based on predefined rules.

Benefits of CI/CD

  • Reduced Errors: Frequent integration and automated testing catch issues early, reducing bugs in production. This leads to improved customer satisfaction and a better reputation for your company.

  • Improved Quality: Consistent builds and rigorous testing lead to higher-quality software. Testing code more often, in smaller batches, and earlier in the development cycle can seriously cut down on fire drills. This results in a smoother development cycle and less team stress. Results are more predictable, and it's easier to find and fix bugs.

  • Faster Releases: Shorter feedback loops enable faster feature delivery. By automating the delivery (deployment) we can reduce intervention and have frequent relesaes that keep the product up-to-date.

  • Risk Mitigation: Smaller, incremental changes minimize the impact of failures. If something fails (with auto deployment enabled) it would only affect a small portion of the system. Rollbacks are simpler because of these small changes.

  • Efficient Collaboration: CI/CD encourages collaboration among developers, testers, and operations teams. Because developers work in smaller, manageable increments, it makes it easier to coordinate efforts.