A Complete Introduction to CI/CD

DevOps has brought with it the rise of CI/CD. In the present context, CI/CD practices are the most widely accepted choice to shorten software development and delivery cycle time. In this article, we will provide you with more insights into this notion, their benefits and how these practices are performed.

What is Continuous Integration?

In a CI practice, developers build, run, and test code on their own workstations before committing code to the version control repository. After changes are made to the repository, a chain of events is put into motion. A typical first step in this chain is to build the latest version of source code. If the build is successful, unit tests are executed. If unit testing succeeds, the build is deployed to test environments where system tests are performed (usually using automated tests). The team is notified about the status of this process, and a report is delivered to provide details, such as build number, defects, and the number of tests.
So, what is Continuous Integration? Continuous Integration is a development practice that helps ensure that software components work together. Integration should be completed frequently; if possible, on an hourly or daily basis.

What is Continuous Delivery?

Continuous delivery (CD) is the ability to deploy your integrated code into production without the need of human intervention. In practice, CD picks up where continuous integration ends.

Dependent on policies and processes defined by teams, developers may do the following with CI/CD:

Step 1: Before committing changes, developers check to see if the current build succeeded. If not, fix errors before committing new changes.

Step 2: If the current build succeeded, reset the workstation with the build’s configuration.

Step 3: Build and test locally to ensure the update does not break any functionality. If successful, commit new changes.

Step 4: Allow CI to complete with new changes.

Step 5: If the build fails, stop and fix errors on local workstations. Go back to Step 3.

Step 6: If the build passes, continue working on other items.

CI/CD Workflow Pipeline

A CI/CD pipeline is a path for delivering a unit of change that starts from development to delivery, usually consists of the following main phases:

Phase 1: Commit
When developers complete a change, they commit the change to the repository.

Phase 2: Build
Source code from the repository is integrated into a build.

Phase 3: Automate tests
Automated tests are run against the build. Test automation is an essential element of any CI/CD pipeline.
Phase 4: Deploy
The built version is delivered to production.

Importance of test automation for CI/CD

Test automation is a crucial component of any CI/CD pipeline. The benefits of applying CI/CD cannot be realized if there is a lack of automated testing and a low level of test coverage. Teams need to perform automated testing at all levels including unit, integration, and system testing.

Conclusion

The adoption of continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) is on a rise, this growth possibly indicates the way how modern developers approach building great products. In the present context, CI/CD is at the core of DevOps, and both CI and CD constitute two of the most important processes in any DevOps pipeline.So now it’s a good time for you to start learning CI/CD if you haven’t done so, it will be a valuable skillset with high demand for the future to come.