Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery – Best CI/CD Tutorial

Written By The IoT Academy
Published on July 17th, 2024
Updated on July 21, 2024

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) are crucial in modern software development. CI involves developers regularly combining their code changes into a central repository, which triggers automated tests to find errors early. As well as this teamwork-focused approach reduces integration risks and speeds up software updates. CD automates deploying software from testing to production, ensuring reliable and fast releases. So, this CICD tutorial is here to cover why CI/CD is important, its benefits, and how to set up CI/CD pipelines using tools like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Travis CI, and CircleCI.

Table of Contents

What is Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery?

Continuous Integration (CI) is when developers regularly combine their code changes into one place. Each time this happens, a computer automatically builds the code, tests it, and checks for mistakes. The aim is to catch any errors early in the process, making them easier and cheaper to fix. CI encourages developers to make frequent updates to the main code branch, ensuring all changes are checked continuously. This helps teams work together better and lowers the risk of problems when integrating code. Also, speeds up how quickly software updates and new features can be delivered reliably.

However, in the realm of continuous integration and continuous delivery, CD is a way teams make software quickly and reliably. It builds on Continuous Integration (CI) by automating the entire process from testing to releasing. When code changes pass tests, CD automatically puts them into production. This helps minimize the time between writing code and making it available to users. CD needs good tools for testing, managing configurations, and automating deployments. By allowing teams to release software often and safely. The CD makes it easier to deliver updates and new features quickly and predictably.

Why CI/CD is Important?

Continuous Integration & Delivery are vital for modern software development because they speed up and improve quality. It automates the integration, testing, and deployment processes, reducing problems and catching bugs early. This means faster releases and quicker delivery of new features and fixes. CI/CD also boosts teamwork as developers frequently share and integrate code. Automated tests ensure code changes are reliable before going live. Overall, CI/CD maintains high software quality and speeds up delivery, making it essential for efficient and competitive development.

Continuous Integration Benefits

Continuous Integration (CI) offers many benefits. It detects bugs early with automated testing, so problems are fixed quickly. CI improves teamwork by encouraging frequent code sharing and reducing conflicts. It ensures consistent builds, keeping the software always ready for deployment. CI also improves code quality with automated tests and analysis, making the software more reliable. Overall, CI makes development faster and smoother. So, we can say that both continuous integration and continuous delivery are important.

Continuous Delivery Benefits

Continuous Delivery (CD) offers many benefits. It makes software releases faster and more reliable by automating the deployment process, which reduces human error. CD allows teams to quickly deliver new features and fixes, meeting market demands promptly. It improves software quality through continuous testing before deployment. The CD makes deployments routine and less stressful, boosting developer productivity and confidence. Overall, CD simplifies the release process, making it efficient and dependable, resulting in better software and happier customers.

Setting Up a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery Pipeline

Setting up a Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) pipeline involves several key steps to automate and streamline your software development process. As well as here is a straightforward guide to get you started:

Source Control Management (SCM): Start by using a source control system like Git, which allows developers to collaborate and manage code changes.
Automated Builds: Set up an automated build process that compiles the code and runs automated tests. Tools like Jenkins, Travis CI, and CircleCI are popular choices.
Automated Testing: Integrate automated tests into your build process. Unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests ensure code quality.
Continuous Integration: Configure your CI server to trigger builds on every code commit. As well as ensures that every change is tested immediately.
Continuous Delivery: Automate the deployment process to ensure that code can be deployed to production at any time. This involves creating scripts to deploy the application to a staging environment, running additional tests, and then deploying to production.

Free CI CD Tools

Using free continuous integration and continuous delivery tools can help you automate your software development processes without incurring additional costs. So, here are some of the most popular free CI/CD tools available:

Jenkins

Description: An open-source automation server that supports building, deploying, and automating any project.
Features: Extensive plugin ecosystem, support for multiple languages, and integration with various SCM tools.

GitHub Actions

Description: A CI/CD service integrated with GitHub repositories.
Features: Native GitHub integration, customizable workflows, and community-contributed actions.

Travis CI

Description: A hosted CI/CD service that integrates with GitHub repositories.
Features: Easy setup, support for multiple languages, and free for open-source projects.

CircleCI

Description: A CI/CD platform that automates development workflows.
Features: Fast builds, customizable workflows, and integration with various VCS and cloud providers.

Choosing the Right CI CD Platform

When selecting a CI/CD platform, consider the following factors:

Scalability: Ensure the platform can handle your project’s growth and complexity.
Integration: Look for a platform that integrates seamlessly with your existing tools and technologies.
Ease of Use: Choose a platform that is easy to set up and configure.
Community and Support: A strong community and good support can help you resolve issues quickly.

Importance of CI CD in Software Development

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery is crucial in modern software development because it automates key processes from integrating code changes to deploying software. Continuous Integration (CI) ensures early detection of bugs by automatically building and testing code changes. Continuous Delivery (CD) extends this by automating software deployment, making releases faster and more reliable. Together, CI/CD improves teamwork, reduces risks when integrating code, and speeds up delivering software updates and new features. Maintaining a consistent and automated workflow. CI CD technologies help teams meet market demands quickly while ensuring software reliability and quality are consistently high.

Continuous Integration and Delivery Pipeline

A typical CI/CD pipeline includes the following stages:

Code Commit: Developers commit code changes to the source repository.
Build: An automated build process compiles the code and runs unit tests.
Test: Automated tests, including integration and end-to-end tests, are executed.
Deploy to Staging: The application is deployed to a staging environment for further testing.
Deploy to Production: After passing all tests, the application is deployed to the production environment.

Conclusion

In conclusion, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) are important aspects of the modern software development life cycle. They automate testing, deployment, and integration, reducing errors and speeding up releases. CI catches bugs early and maintains code quality, while CD automates deployment for faster, reliable updates. Supported by tools like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Travis CI, and CircleCI, CI/CD helps teams deliver software quickly and predictably. Whether setting up a new pipeline or improving current processes, CI/CD boosts efficiency and competitiveness in software development. By focusing on automation and continual improvement, CI/CD ensures smooth, scalable, and high-quality software delivery.

Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs)

Q. Is continuous integration and continuous delivery the same as agile?

Ans. CI/CD and Agile are different but work well together. Agile focuses on iterative development and teamwork, while CI/CD automates code integration and delivery. This automation helps agile teams release software faster and more consistently.

Q. What is the difference between DevOps and CI/CD?

Ans. DevOps is about teamwork between development and operations teams. As well as CI/CD are specific practices in DevOps that automate how code is integrated and delivered.

About The Author:

The IoT Academy

The IoT Academy as a reputed ed-tech training institute is imparting online / Offline training in emerging technologies such as Data Science, Machine Learning, IoT, Deep Learning, and more. We believe in making revolutionary attempt in changing the course of making online education accessible and dynamic.