What is CI, CD and CT?

 

        

INTRODUCTION

    In the realm of software development, Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) are vital practices that enhance the process of delivering high-quality software. CI/CD serves as a fundamental aspect of DevOps, which is a culture and set of practices designed to improve collaboration between development and operations teams. Together, CI and CD empower teams to deliver software more rapidly, with improved quality and efficiency. By automating repetitive tasks and promoting a culture of collaboration, CI/CD enables organizations to respond swiftly to market demands and maintain a competitive edge in the constantly changing tech landscape.         

                                     

  

WHY IS CI/CD IMPORTANT IN DEVOPS?

      CI/CD enables organizations to reduce bugs and code failures while ensuring a seamless cycle of software development and updates. As applications expand, the features of CI/CD can help simplify processes, boost efficiency, and enhance workflows.

     By automating the manual steps that were once necessary to deploy new code from a commit to production, CI/CD minimizes downtime and accelerates code releases. Additionally, the quicker integration of updates and changes allows for more frequent and effective incorporation of user feedback, leading to better outcomes for end users and increased customer satisfaction overall.

 WHAT IS CI?

Continuous Integration (CI) is a process that takes place before a build, where code is tested. Continuous Improvement (CI) enables developers to write, update, or fix features and commit code to a central repository multiple times a day with reliability. Each update initiates an automated build and testing process for the project, ensuring that any code changes merged into the repository are dependable.

This process is crucial for enhancing deployment efficiency. CI consistently integrates code changes into the existing codebase, allowing for the quick identification and resolution of conflicts arising from different developers' contributions.

If a development team is not making regular commits to a shared branch in a common source code repository, they are not effectively practicing continuous integration. Furthermore, even if the testing and building processes are automated, if developers are working on isolated branches that are rarely merged into a shared branch, that does not qualify as continuous integration.

WHAT IS CD IN DEVOPS?

 Continuous Development (CD) involves automating the entire software release process. After the code successfully passes all tests, the final step is deployment. In a DevOps pipeline, CD is commonly known as continuous delivery, but it can also refer to continuous deployment.

Continuous Delivery Vs. Continuous Deployment

 Continuous delivery involves the following steps:

 1. A change is placed in the staging environment and added to the release schedule.

2. A person manually approves the code.

3. The code is then deployed.

 On the other hand, continuous deployment automatically releases code to production as soon as it passes the necessary tests.

These two concepts are closely related, but they have distinct differences. Both aim to enhance the speed and reliability of software development and release processes. The main distinction lies in the extent of automation utilized. Continuous delivery enables developers to increase their productivity by allowing them to deploy a new release at any moment with just a few clicks. In contrast, continuous deployment takes this a step further, as every change made in the source code is automatically deployed to production without needing a developer's approval.

 

WHAT IS CT?

         While CI and CD are essential for speeding up product releases, Continuous Testing (CT) adds a vital quality aspect to these frequent updates. In the CI/CD pipeline or DevOps pipeline, CT is sometimes overlooked, even though it plays a crucial role in any pipeline. The true advantages of implementing CI/CD are not fully realized without automated testing.

         CT serves as a key facilitator of continuous feedback. It is not only seen as the initial step in the right direction when starting a DevOps journey, but it also propels software delivery throughout the software development cycle (SDLC) by acting as a continuous feedback mechanism. This enables DevOps teams to conduct deployment and post-deployment testing in local environments.

 

BENEFITS OF CI, CD, CT

Manual software deployment can easily fall victim to human error, which is why it’s essential for these three processes to run smoothly together. The success of one process relies on the other two functioning seamlessly throughout the delivery cycle. Each process has distinct roles and responsibilities, but they are all interconnected for achieving a quality deployment.

By automating the steps leading up to a product release, organizations can ensure that both the code and the deployment process are efficient and accurate. When developers or other teams discover a defect, they can utilize the CI, CD, CT pipeline to automate actions such as rolling back to a previous version of the code. When these three processes are combined, they can greatly enhance the primary goals of any development team: speed and quality. By integrating CT closely with CI/CD, developers can improve operational agility and reduce time-to-market.

 

TOOLS FOR CI/CD

CI/CD tools assist teams in automating their development, deployment, and testing processes. Some tools focus specifically on the integration (CI) aspect, while others manage development and deployment (CD), and some are dedicated to continuous testing or similar functions.

Tekton Pipelines is a CI/CD framework tailored for Kubernetes platforms, offering a standardized cloud-native CI/CD experience using containers. In addition to Tekton Pipelines, other open-source CI/CD tools are:

Jenkins: which can serve as a simple CI server or a comprehensive CD hub.

Spinnaker: a CD platform designed for multi-cloud environments.

GoCD: a CI/CD server that emphasizes modelling and visualization.

Concourse: known as "an open-source continuous thing-doer."

Screwdriver: a build platform specifically created for CD.

 

TO CONCLUDE

CI/CD is a software development methodology that offers numerous advantages to development teams, such as quicker time-to-market, enhanced quality, better collaboration, minimized risk, and cost savings. By automating the software delivery pipeline, teams can swiftly roll out new features and address bugs, while also lowering the chances of significant failures and downtime. With a variety of CI/CD tools available, teams can more easily adopt this approach and enhance their software delivery process.