CI/CD concepts
With the continuous method of software development, you continuously build, test, and deploy iterative code changes. This iterative process helps reduce the chance that you develop new code based on buggy or failed previous versions. With this method, you strive to have less human intervention or even no intervention at all, from the development of new code until its deployment.
The three primary approaches for the continuous method are:
Continuous Integration
Consider an application that has its code stored in a Git repository in GitLab. Developers push code changes every day, multiple times a day. For every push to the repository, you can create a set of scripts to build and test your application automatically. These scripts help decrease the chances that you introduce errors in your application.
This practice is known as .
Each change submitted to an application, even to development branches,
is built and tested automatically and continuously. These tests ensure the
changes pass all tests, guidelines, and code compliance
standards you established for your application.
Continuous Delivery checks the code automatically, but it requires
human intervention to manually and strategically trigger the deployment
of the changes.
is another step beyond Continuous Integration, similar to
Continuous Delivery. The difference is that instead of deploying your
application manually, you set it to be deployed automatically.
Human intervention is not required.
GitLab CI/CD is the part of GitLab that you use
for all of the continuous methods (Continuous Integration,
Delivery, and Deployment). With GitLab CI/CD, you can test, build,
and publish your software with no third-party application or integration needed.
For an overview, see Introduction to GitLab CI/CD from an April 2020 GitLab meetup.
GitLab CI/CD fits in a common development workflow.
You can start by discussing a code implementation in an issue
and working locally on your proposed changes. Then you can push your
commits to a feature branch in a remote repository that’s hosted in GitLab.
The push triggers the CI/CD pipeline for your project. Then, GitLab CI/CD:
After the implementation works as expected:
If something goes wrong, you can roll back your changes.
This workflow shows the major steps in the GitLab process.
You don’t need any external tools to deliver your software and
you can visualize all the steps in the GitLab UI.
If you look deeper into the workflow, you can see
the features available in GitLab at each stage of the DevOps
lifecycle.
Continuous Deployment
GitLab CI/CD
GitLab CI/CD workflow
localhost.
A deeper look into the CI/CD workflow
