CI/CD concepts

Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) are synonymous with DevOps. This is because every practice discussed in Chapter 1, Career Paths – plan, code, build, test, release, deploy, and operate – is included in the infinite CI/CD loop, as shown in Figure 2.16:

Figure 2.16 – Infinite CI/CD loop

Let's first examine CI and the related practices and tools associated with it.

Continuous integration

Continuous integration is the process of merging code changes from multiple developers into a single branch on a regular and frequent basis. To do this effectively, you need some form of automation that builds your code and executes a battery of tests against it. CI servers help to effectively integrate your code using CI pipelines.

After a developer makes a change, code changes are committed to a source code management system by using git. The CI server has a built-in listener (hook) to trigger a build...