The current modern software development environment is made up of creating testing, deploying, and releasing applications quickly. Automated tools are crucial roles in this. DevOps takes these methodological and technical aspects and apply the concepts to real-world software applications. To Learn more about DevOps consider taking DevOps Engineer Course.
This blog post discusses DevOps concepts, the key elements of the DevOps process and gives practical suggestions for integrating the DevOps method in the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
What is the DevOps Pipeline?
A DevOps pipeline allows teams to build tests, deploy, and test software efficiently and quickly through the use of practices and tools. It also assists with software maintenance and upgrades. Additionally an DevOps pipeline makes it easier to continuously integration of changes to code to an online repository. It automates of tests as well as builds and allows the efficient solution of conflicts in code as well as identification of vulnerabilities and bugs. DevOps practices help can reduce times to market (TTM) and facilitate rapid development of software development processes.
Continuous Integration (CI)
Continuous integration (CI) involves developer code being frequently merged into a shared repository of code and the addition of automated units tests, build and tools for verification of code to the code. The principal objectives of CI are to enable a fast process for verification of code and eliminating code conflicts on the time of release.
To accomplish this, code uploaded into the shared repository is automatically transformed into an artifact, and then checked. This process is called the build, if errors are discovered, the developers are informed about failures in tests and assertions that cause the problem so that they can get the program improved. It is a common practice to use the CI pipeline is typically coupled with the standard curation methods including pull requests.
CI helps to avoid "integration nightmare" as well as "merge day" problems when branches of the base code require reconciliation.
Continuous Delivery (CD)
Continuous delivery (CD) is the process of packing code into deliverable components that can then be put into production. CD does not mean "continuous deployment"-- the automated deployment of changes in code to production.
The CD environment is the production-like sandbox in which incremental changes to code are evaluated and released. Following reviewing and passing through the testing, developers can make changes available to production. The introduction of small code updates to the production code environment helps with the testing of your code and assists to avoid bottlenecks in software and merger conflicts. Testing in the sandbox prior to deployment implies that the applications that are deployed to production using CD generally have better stability and less prone to bugs.
Continuous Deployment (CD)
Continuous deployment (CD) is the automatic release of updates to the user , without the need for manual verification or triggers. Similar to CD automated tests and builds are implemented to the code however, any changes made to the production are released immediately. CD results in the most efficient product release. However, it does have some limitations. For instance, CD may push to the production environment vulnerabilities and bugs which were not discovered by automated tests. Therefore, it should be applied with care and only for minor code changes. Additionally it should be used with effective rolling update procedures (e.g., blue/green deployments and releases with canary).
Designing a DevOps Pipeline
A successful DevOps pipeline must include the following essential components:
- CI/CD framework
- Control of Sources
- Build automation tools
- Framework for testing code It may also incorporate pipeline tools to help with container security as well as IaC security. There are a variety of open source DevOps tools that will aid in the creation of an effective DevOps pipeline.
CI/CD FRAMEWORK
Frameworks for CI/CD like Jenkins as well as Travis CI help implement the CI/CD element in the DevOps pipeline. These frameworks usually include servers that are able to perform automated tests, builds as well as deployments in response to the incoming commits to code. The CI/CD tool must be linked to the repository of source code.
SOURCE CONTROL Management
Control of source code (or versions control) management tools allow the tracking and management of modifications to code. They offer a continuous history of the code development which includes individual commits by developers as well as pull requests. They also assist in committing modifications to remote repositories as well as deal with conflicts between different contributions. In the field of source-control management tools Git has the most well-developed community and is also the most well-known.
BUILD AUTOMATION TOOLS
Build automation tools assist in packaging an application's code into an executable object. They differ in their function based on the type of programming language employed: interpretable or compiled.
Tools that compile languages such as C++ or Java don't just create code, but also an native build environment to compile source code, making libraries, creating wrappers, and creating executables that can be used in a variety of combinations. Tools that build interpreters like Grunt, Webpack, Rollup, and Babelfor JavaScript can be utilized to join JavaScript files and to also obscure and reduce their impact.
CODE Testing FRAMEWORK
Frameworks for testing code help developers detect any errors while they are in development. They typically have the ability to test unit code which could be integrated in the application code and then applied at time of execution. Additionally they can be integrated into existing CI/CD tools in order to automate the procedure. There are many testing frameworks that can be used for different language programming systems (e.g., Pytest for Python and JUnit for Java).
You can also incorporate security scans and code quality into the building process by including automatic Snyk Code test to your CD/CI.
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