Preface

Continuous integration (CI) is the practice of using automated tools to compile automatically and continuously, based on changes made by developers to source code, and packaging and testing them to ensure they are stable and able to provide the expected functionality.

Continuous delivery (CD) uses the artifacts created via CI and deploys those applications without human intervention to end users, ensuring these are always updated with the latest versions and, in most cases, performing additional verifications in multiple environments before reaching the final end users.

All of this is possible by taking advantage of Azure Pipelines, one of the leading platforms to support all aspects of the software development life cycle (SDLC); however, in this book, we will focus on the CI/CD aspects and how to take advantage of the features available to effect the different task automation options under the DevOps umbrella, even touching on the DevSecOps aspects.

In this book, we provide you with the tools to get started, by learning the basic concepts and building from there to more complex scenarios. This will lead to end-to-end scenarios that enable your software development teams with the tools to automate, every step of the way, the delivery of applications, from source code to a running platform.