What is CI/CD in software development?

CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment) is a practice in software development that aims to automate the process of building, testing and deploying software. The main goal of CI/CD is to accelerate the development and improve the quality of the software product by automating tasks and implementing a continuous build-test-deploy cycle. The basic concepts of CI/CD include Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery.

This is the practice of developers regularly merging their code into a shared repository (such as a version control system such as Git). After merging the code, automatic assembly and testing of the software is carried out in order to detect conflicts and errors.

This practice assumes that the software is always ready for release (release), as the assembly, testing and deployment processes are fully automated. The software can be ready for release at any time, and developers can release new versions immediately after successful testing. Continuous Deployment (CD) - a practice that is an extension Continuous Delivery and involves the automatic deployment of new versions of the software in the production environment after they have been successfully tested.

The application of CI/CD allows to reduce the development cycle time, improve the quality of the software, reduce the probability of errors in the product and make the software deployment process more reliable and efficient.