What is a Continuous Integration (CI)?

Continuous integration (CI) is a software development practice which requires developers to integrate code into a shared repository frequently, typically multiple times a day. Each code integration is then verified by an automated build and automated tests to detect problems early. CI works hand-in-hand with continuous delivery (CD), a practice where code changes are deployed in production as soon as they pass quality assurance tests.

The Benefits of CI/CD

Continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) offers many advantages to software developers and project managers alike. It increases the speed of delivery, eliminates the manual integration process, and makes the software development process much more reliable.

At a high level, CI/CD can be viewed as a process of automating the cycle of integrating code into the main source code and deploying this code into production. This automated process can provide benefits such as:

– Improved Code Quality – By automatically running tests every time code is integrated, developers can quickly identify and fix bugs, leading to fewer (and less severe) bugs in production.

– Faster Delivery – By automating the code integration process, developers can move faster without having to worry about manual integrations. This should enable faster product feature delivery.

– Improved Collaboration – By having a centralized repository and automated builds, developers can collaborate much more easily, knowing that their code changes won’t cause any issues with other developers’ code.

CI/CD Tools

There are several popular tools used to implement CI/CD pipelines. These tools can range from open source tools such as Jenkins and Travis, to cloud-managed services such as AWS CodePipeline and Microsoft Azure Pipelines.

Regardless of the tool used, all CI/CD pipelines follow a similar pattern. After code is written, a build process is triggered, automated tests are run, the code is deployed to a staging environment, more automated tests are run, and finally the code is released to the production environment.

Conclusion

Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) are powerful tools that can help software development teams move faster, with fewer errors and faster deployment cycles. CI/CD pipelines involve an automated process that starts with checking code into a shared repository, running automated tests, and finally deploying to production. There are many popular CI/CD tools, ranging from open source solutions to cloud-managed services. Ultimately, the goal of CI/CD is to provide better quality code and faster deployment times.