Continuous Deployment

Just as Continuous Delivery represents a logical extension of Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment represents a logical expansion of Continuous Delivery practices. Continuous Deployment is very similar to Continuous Delivery in a lot of ways, but it has one key fundamental variance: there are no approval gates. Without approval gates, code commits to the mainline will end up in the production environment in short order. This type of automation solution requires a high-level of discipline, strict standards, and rock solid automation. It is a practice that has proven valuable for the likes of Etsy, Flickr, and many others. This is because Continuous Deployment dramatically increases deployment velocity. Figure 8-20 describes both Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment, to better showcase the fundamental difference between, them:

Figure 8-20: Differentiation between Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment

It is important to understand that Continuous...