CI/CD, or Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery, is a set of combined practices used in software engineering to automate and streamline the process of delivering applications to customers. Here are the key aspects of CI/CD:
-
Continuous Integration (CI): This involves the automation of building, testing, and securely merging new code changes to a shared repository. The aim is to avoid integration issues and ensure that code changes are reliable and functional.
-
Continuous Delivery (CD): This focuses on automating further stages of the pipeline after the code changes have been integrated. It includes testing, delivery, and deployment of the code changes to end users.
-
Automation: CI/CD bridges the gaps between development and operation activities by enforcing automation in building, testing, and deployment of applications. This automation helps in increasing early defect discovery, productivity, and providing faster release cycles.
-
Benefits: CI/CD aims to increase efficiency, provide faster release cycles, and minimize downtime. It also decreases manual development work and legacy approval processes, allowing DevOps teams to be more innovative in their software development.
-
CI/CD Pipeline: The CI/CD practice, or CI/CD pipeline, forms the backbone of modern-day DevOps operations. It involves adding a high degree of ongoing automation and continuous monitoring to app development.
CI/CD is an essential part of DevOps and modern software development practices, as it maximizes development time, improves productivity, increases efficiency, and streamlines workflows through built-in automation, testing, and collaboration.
In summary, CI/CD is a crucial practice in software engineering that aims to automate and streamline the process of delivering applications to customers, ensuring reliability, efficiency, and faster release cycles.
