What is CI/CD? – A Brief Guide

Continuous integration and continuous delivery, deployment, collectively known as CI/CD count as an integral part of modern software development that is intended to decrease errors at the time of integration and development done to increase project velocity. CI/CD is actually a philosophy and a set of practices that are often augmented by robust tools that focus on automated testing at each stage of the software pipeline.

With the incorporation of CI/CD in your practice, you can reduce the time needed to integrate changes for a release and thoroughly test the change before moving into production. CI/CD comes with many advantages, but successful implementation needs a careful plan and a well thought of consideration. Choosing how to use the continuous integration tools and the changes that are needed in the environment or process can be pretty challenging without trial and error. That being said, sticking to the best practices can be helpful in avoiding common problems and attain quick improvement.

In this blog, we will have a comprehensive understanding of CI/CD to serve the organization’s needs. Before jumping to other things, let us first understand the meaning of continuous integration and continuous delivery, deployment independently.

Continuous Integration

Continuous integration is a method by which the developers combine their code into a shared repository multiple times in a day. For the verification of the integrated code, automated tests and builds are run for it.

Continuous Delivery

Continuous delivery is a method by which the development teams make sure that software is reliable for release at any time. The software is made to pass through an automated testing process and if that happens successfully then it is said to be ready for release into the production phase.

Continuous Deployment

The last and final stage of a mature CI/CD pipeline is that of continuous deployment. It is actually an extension of continuous delivery which automates the release of a production-ready build into a code repository because continuous deployment automates releasing an application to production. Since there is no manual gate at the stage of the pipeline before the production, continuous deployment is dependent on well-designed test automation.

What is CI/CD Pipeline?

CI/CD pipeline is actually a significant part of the modern DevOps environment. It is a deployable path that the software allows on the way to its production with continuous integration and continuous delivery practices. It is a development lifecycle for software and includes multiple stages through which a software application actually passes.

The CI/CD pipeline comprises of the following stages:

1. Version Control: This phase of the CI/CD pipeline is where the code is written by the developers and is committed through version control software. In this step, the commit history of the software code is controlled so that it can be changed if there is a need.
2. Build Phase: The build phase of the CI/CD pipeline is the one in which the developers build their code and then move on to passing this code through a version control system. After this, the code actually returns to the build phase and enters the position of compilation.
3. Unit Testing and Staging: When the software reaches this step, there are various tests that are performed to ensure that the software is functioning well. One of these tests is called the Unit test in which each unit of the software gets tested. After the successful testing, the staging phase is in the position to begin again. As the software passes this test, it is ready to be deployed into the staging process again. The software code is deployed to the staging environment/server so that the code can be viewed before the final tests are conducted.
4. Auto Testing: After the software has passed to the staging environment, another set of automated tests are prepared for the software. It is only when the software completes these tests and is proved deployable that it is sent to the next step, which is called the deployment phase.
5. Deployment: As the auto testing procedure reaches its completion, the next step is the deployment of the software to production. In case of any errors during the testing or the deployment phase, the software gets sent back to the version control phase so that the development team can check for any possible errors. If there are any errors then they are fixed right at that moment. Other stages may also be repeated if there is a need.

What are CI/CD tools?

The CI/CD process must be automated to get the best possible results. Numerous tools help in automating the process so that the entire thing can be done precisely and with minimal effort. These tools are mostly open-source and are designed to assist with collaborative software development. Some of these tools are:

• Jenkins: One of the most commonly used tools for the CI/CD process, Jenkins is one of the earliest and most powerful continuous integration tools. It comes with various interfaces and inbuilt tools that help in the automation of the CI/CD process. In the beginning, it was introduced as a part of a project called Hudson, which came out in 2005. Then it was officially released as Jenkins in 2011 and has a vast plugin ecosystem that helps in delivering the features we need.
• GoCD: An open-source tool that helps the development teams in the process of continuous delivery and continuous integration, GoCD was released with the name Cruise in 2007 by the name ThoughtWorks. It was renamed GoCD in 2010.
• CircleCI: CircleCI is becoming one of the best-built platforms which is hosted in the cloud and is a modern tool for the CI/CD process. One of the latest features is called CircleCI Orbs. It has sharable code packages which help in building easily and quickly.
• Buddy: One of the latest continuous integration tools, Buddy is designed for developers for lowering the entry threshold in DevOps. Officially launched in the year 2015, Buddy was released as a cloud-only service. Although it does not use the YAML configuration, it also supports .yml files.
• GitLabCI: One of the famous continuous integration tools, GitLabCI is a web-based DevOps tool that provides a Git-repository manager, which helps in managing the git repositories. This was integrated into the GitLab software after being a standalone project that was released in September 2015. The CI/CD process is defined with a code repository and there are some tools called runners that are used to complete the work. 

Benefits of CI/CD

1. Easy Debugging and Change: It is very simple to debug and change the codes when there are small pieces of codes that are continuously integrating. The pieces can be tested while continuously integrating them into the code repository.
2. Software Delivery and Speed Increases: With the help of CI/CD, the speed of software release and delivery gets increased along with the software development. After this, the process of software released becomes reliable and frequent.
3. High-quality Code: The quality of code increases because it is tested each time it gets integrated with the code repository. The development becomes much safer and reliable. Additionally, CI/CD pipeline automates the integration and testing work because a lot more time can be spent on increasing the quality of code.
4. Cost Reduction: CI/CD helps in automating the development and testing process so that the effort of testing and integration gets reduced. These errors are reduced due to automation and it saves time and cost of the developers. This saves time and cost that can be applied to improve the code quality.
5. Enhanced Flexibility: With CI/CD, the errors are found quickly and the product can be released a lot more frequently. This flexibility helps in adding new features. With automation, new changes are in a position to get adopted quickly and easily.

What are the Best Practices in CI/CD?

The CI/CD process has some of the best practices that greatly improve the performance of the process while adhering to avoiding some of the common problems. These best practices are:

1. CI/CD should work independently: It is important for CI/CD to be made the only way responsible for deployment to production. In the case of CI/CD, the failures are prompt and the production process can be stopped until the cause of failure is explored and solved. This is an important mechanism that keeps environments safe from any distrustful code. It is a process that works independently for software development, integration, and delivery work. Therefore it comes with distinct advantages like automation and quick functioning over other processes.
2. Quick tests should run early: There are some of the bests that run comparatively faster than others. It is necessary that these tests run early. Running these tests first assists in finding the errors easily. It is important to find these errors in software development at the earliest so that any future problems can be prevented.
3. Local running of tests: The developers must adhere to the habit of running all tests locally before committing or sharing them in the CI/CD pipeline repository. This step is beneficial because it helps in troubleshooting all problems before they are shared with others, which is an advantage for the developer.
4. Fast CI/CD pipeline: The CI/CD pipeline is one of the most important parts of the process and for this reason, it is responsible for quick integration and delivery process. Methods must be found to enhance the speed and optimization of the pipeline environment.

Conclusion:

CI/CD is the best practice for the DevOps team to implement. In addition, it is an agile methodology that facilitates the development team to achieve all business requirements, the best quality of code, and the security because the deployment steps are automated.

CI/CD assists the teams to become a lot more productive when shipping the software with quality built-in. However, the road to having one-click deployments can be produced on demand and is certainly not an easy one. This is mainly because even though these continuous integration tools can help in achieving CI/CD a lot more effectively, there is a need for a cultural change and that comes when all people in the team understand that change very well.

Encaptechno works to help organizations unleash maximum productivity and results with the implementation of CI/CD. In case you want to know more about CI/CD implementation then get in touch with us.