What is CI/CD?
Quick Answer
Continuous Integration — every push triggers an automated build + tests, so integration problems surface within minutes. Continuous Delivery — every green build is ready to deploy (deploy is a button). Continuous Deployment — every green build is deployed automatically.
Continuous integration means every commit kicks off an automated build and test run, so if my change conflicts with someone else's or breaks a test, I know in a few minutes instead of at the end of a two-week branch. Continuous delivery adds that every passing build is actually deployable — the deploy is just a button press. Continuous deployment goes all the way and ships every green build automatically. The whole idea is fast feedback and small, safe, reversible changes, and it only works if the pipeline stays fast, otherwise people start batching up commits.
- A typical pipeline: restore → build → unit tests → static analysis / lint → integration tests → package → deploy to staging → smoke tests → (approve) → production.
- Goals: fast feedback, small safe changes, repeatable deploys, easy rollback.
- Tools: GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps Pipelines, GitLab CI, TeamCity, Jenkins.
- Keep the pipeline fast (parallelise, cache) — a slow CI makes people batch changes, which defeats the point.