CI/CD Fundamentals

Continuous Integration and Delivery core ideas

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CI/CD Fundamentals

Continuous Integration (CI) ensures every change integrates cleanly. Continuous Delivery / Deployment (CD) moves integrated changes to environments quickly and safely.

Objectives

  • Reduce integration risk
  • Shorten feedback loops
  • Increase deploy confidence & frequency

Core Stages

  1. Source – Code + config + infrastructure definitions
  2. Build – Compile / package / containerize
  3. Test – Unit, integration, security, smoke
  4. Artifact – Immutable image or package
  5. Deploy – Push to target environment
  6. Verify – Health checks, synthetic tests, metrics

Key Practices

| Practice | Why | | -------- | --- | | Small commits | Easier isolate failures | | Automated tests | Fast safety net | | Immutable artifacts | Promote same build across envs | | Trunk-based dev | Reduces merge drift | | Shift-left security | Catch issues early |

Metrics

  • Lead time for change
  • Deployment frequency
  • Change failure rate
  • MTTR (Mean time to restore)

Anti‑Patterns

  • Long‑lived feature branches
  • Manual test gate without automation
  • Rebuilding artifact per environment
  • Hidden deployment scripts

Start simple: one trunk, one pipeline, one artifact, visible metrics.