CI/CD

CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment, a set of practices that automate the software delivery pipeline from code commit to production release. Continuous Integration means developers merge code changes into a shared repository frequently, with each merge triggering automated builds and tests. Continuous Deployment extends this by automatically releasing validated changes to production.

A typical CI/CD pipeline runs through several stages: code is pushed to a repository, automated tests execute including unit tests, integration tests, and linting, the application is built and packaged, and the resulting artifact is deployed to staging and then production. Tools like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, and CircleCI orchestrate these pipelines through configuration files defining each stage.

For web development, CI/CD is essential because it eliminates the manual, error-prone process of building and deploying applications. Teams with CI/CD pipelines can deploy multiple times per day with confidence because every change passes through the same automated quality gates. This speed enables rapid iteration based on user feedback and catches bugs before they reach users.