A CI/CD pipeline is a series of steps that must be performed in order to deliver a new version of software. It is a practice focused on improving software delivery throughout the software development life cycle via automation. The term CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (or Continuous Deployment) . Continuous integration is a software development practice in which all developers merge code changes in a central repository multiple times a day. Continuous delivery adds the practice of automating the entire software release process. The main objective of a CI/CD pipeline is to minimize human error and maintain a consistent process for how software is released.
A CI/CD pipeline bridges the gaps between development and operation activities and teams by enforcing automation in building, testing, and deployment of applications. The pipeline is a process that drives software development through a path of building, testing, and deploying code. The pipeline includes compiling code, unit tests, code analysis, security, and binaries creation. For containerized environments, this pipeline would also include packaging the code into a container image to be deployed across a hybrid cloud.
CI/CD automates much or all of the manual human intervention traditionally needed to get new code from a commit into production, encompassing the build, test (including integration tests, unit tests, and regression tests), and deploy phases, as well as infrastructure provisioning. With a CI/CD pipeline, development teams can make changes to code that are then automatically tested and pushed out for delivery and deployment. The aim is to increase early defect discovery, increase productivity, and provide faster release cycles.
CI/CD is an essential part of DevOps and any modern software development practice. A purpose-built CI/CD platform can maximize development time by improving an organizations productivity, increasing efficiency, and streamlining workflows through built-in automation, testing, and collaboration. Having a CI/CD pipeline has more positive effects than simply making what was previously done a little bit more efficient. Developers can stay focused on writing code and monitoring the behavior of the system, while the pipeline takes care of the rest.
