Cloud & DevOps
CI/CD is a DevOps practice in which code changes are automatically built, tested, and deployed through a pipeline, enabling teams to deliver software updates rapidly and reliably.
Continuous Integration (CI) requires developers to merge code into a shared repository frequently — often multiple times per day — and each merge triggers automated builds and test suites to catch integration bugs immediately. Continuous Delivery (CD) extends CI by automating the release process so that every passing build is in a deployable state and can be pushed to production with a single click or automatically. Together, CI/CD pipelines replace error-prone manual release procedures, create an auditable history of every change, and dramatically reduce the time between writing code and delivering value to users. Popular CI/CD tools include GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, CircleCI, and AWS CodePipeline.
Example
Every pull request to a SaaS company's main branch triggers a GitHub Actions pipeline that runs 800 unit tests, builds a Docker image, deploys to a staging environment, and runs smoke tests — all in under 10 minutes.
Related terms
DevOps
DevOps is a set of practices, cultural principles, and tooling that unifies software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten delivery cycles, improve deployment frequency, and increase system reliability.
Docker
Docker is an open-source platform that enables developers to build, package, and distribute applications as portable containers, each bundling the application code with its exact runtime environment.
Containerization
Containerization is a lightweight virtualisation technique that packages an application and all its dependencies — libraries, configuration, and runtime — into a portable, isolated container that runs consistently across any environment.
Version Control
Version control is a system that records every change made to source code over time, enabling teams to track history, revert to previous states, and collaborate on the same codebase simultaneously without overwriting each other's work.
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