What is CI/CD?

CI stands for Continuous Integration, and it is a software engineering practice that involves merging all development work into a single codebase several times a day. This practice helps to ensure that all code changes are tested, and that the codebase remains in a releasable state at all times. 

Continuous Delivery is also a software engineering practice in which teams develop software products in short cycles. This makes it easier to release software at any time. The primary goal of continuous delivery is to build, test, and release software at the right speed and frequency. Allowing frequent updates in production helps reduce the cost, time, and risk of deploying changes.

CI/CD is a set of processes that enable developers to quickly incorporate changes into software applications and deploy them to staging or production environments. This is a key component of Agile software development as it ensures that changes are tested and released in a timely manner.

The CI/CD process begins with a development team writing code and committing it to a source code repository. Once the code is executed, it starts an automated process. This often involves running tests to check your code for errors. If the tests pass, the code is integrated into the main branch of the repository. This integration process is CI-centric and is typically automated using CI tools such as Jenkins, CircleCI, and TravisCI etc.

The next step in the CI/CD process is continuous delivery. During this phase, the code is deployed to a staging or production environment, depending on your business needs. The deployment process is automated and often managed by a CD pipeline.