What is continuous delivery (CD)?

Continuous delivery (CD) refers to the process of automatically preparing code changes for release and deployment into a production environment. Continuous delivery is an essential component of DevOps release management and is often used in concert with continuous integration (CI).

Even at the tail end of the software development life cycle (SDLC), developers can successfully deploy most product code versions with the help of CI/CD pipelines, along with a version control system (VCS). Continuous delivery enables programmers to automatically test code changes using multiple lenses (not just unit testing) before releasing them to customers. In this way, developers can have faith in the quality of the build artifacts they’re deploying, as they will have been subjected to rigorous testing and found to be in compliance with industry standards. API testing, load testing, functional and UI testing, integration testing, compliance testing, and others...