Understanding The Cicd Pipeline, Its Stages, And Best Practices

By Author: Hermes Campion
Total Articles: 7
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A CICD pipeline helps in automating the process of software delivery. It builds code, runs tests, and helps you to safely deploy a new version of the software. The pipeline reduces manual errors, provides feedback to developers, and allows fast product iterations. CICD pipeline also introduces automation and continuous monitoring throughout the lifecycle of a software product. It involves the integration and testing phase to delivery and deployment. These connected practices are referred to as CI/CD pipelines.

What are Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Deployment?

Continuous integration is a software development procedure where members of the team can integrate their work at least once a day. In this method, integration is checked by an automated build to look for the error.

Continuous delivery is a software engineering technique in which a team develops software products in a short cycle. It ensures that software can be easily released at any time.

Continuous deployment is the process in which product functionalities are delivered using automatic deployment. It helps testers ...
... to validate whether the codebase changes are correct, and it is stable or not.

Stages of a CICD pipeline

Source Stage and Build Stage

In the source stage, the pipeline is triggered by a code archive. Any change in the program triggers a notification to the CI/CD tool that runs an equivalent pipeline. Other common triggers include user-initiated workflows, automated schedules, and the results of other pipelines.

This is the second stage of the CI/CD Pipeline in which you merge the source code and its dependencies. Primarily it is done for building a runnable instance of software that you can potentially ship to the end-user. Programs that are written in C++, Java, C, or Go language should be compiled. On the other hand, JavaScript, Python, and Ruby programs can work without the build stage. Failure to pass the build stage means there is a fundamental project misconfiguration, so it is better that you address such an issue immediately.

Test Stage and Deploy Stage

Test Stage includes the execution of automated tests to validate the correctness of code and the behavior of the software. This stage prevents the bugs from reaching the clients. It is the responsibility of developers to write automated tests.

Deploy stage is the last stage where your product goes live. Once the build has successfully passed through all the required test scenarios, it is ready to deploy to the live server.

CICD Pipeline Best Practices

Start with a small proof of project before going ahead and complete the whole development process at once. Set up a pipeline with more than one stage in which fast fundamental tests run first.

Start each workflow from the same, isolated and clean environment. Run open source tools that cover everything from code style to security scanning. Setup a better code hub to check the code quality continuously by running the standard set of tests against every branch. You have to define success metrics before you start the transition to Continuous Delivery automation. This will help you to consistently analyze your software, developing progress help refining where required.

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