CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment) is an agile software development practice that involves integrating code changes frequently and delivering them to production automatically. This approach enables developers to build, test, and deploy code changes in a rapid and iterative manner. CI/CD pipeline automates the software delivery process, from code changes to production deployment. It reduces the time and effort required for manual testing, releases, and deployments.
In this blog, I will explore what a CI/CD pipeline is, its benefits, and how to set it up for your project.
What is CI/CD pipeline ?
A CI/CD pipeline is a series of automated stages that code changes go through from development to production. The pipeline consists of several stages, such as building, testing, and deploying the code. Each stage has its own set of tools and processes to ensure that code changes are tested and validated before they are deployed to production.
The primary goal of a CI/CD pipeline is to automate the software delivery process, reduce manual intervention, and increase efficiency. A pipeline provides a consistent and repeatable process that ensures that code changes are validated, and any errors or issues are identified and addressed early in the process.
CI/CD pipelines help to reduce the risk of errors and ensure that changes are delivered quickly and reliably. By automating the build, test, and deployment processes, developers can focus on writing code, while the pipeline takes care of the repetitive and error-prone tasks. This ultimately leads to faster release cycles and better quality software. CI/CD pipeline introduces automation and continuous monitoring throughout the lifecycle of a software product. It involves from the integration and testing phase to delivery and deployment.
Components of a CI/CD pipeline
Continuous integration automates the building and testing of your software. Continuous deployment is an extension of this automation and allows for your software to be deployed after every code commit that passes your test suite. The most successful development teams deploy their software often. To deliver high-quality software efficiently means building, testing, and deploying code using CI/CD best practices.
Build stage
In the build stage, multiple development teams contribute code developed on their own machines into a shared repository. This sounds simple but quickly introduces complexities. Beyond version control, problems can arise including subtle differences in developer and production environments, tooling, and quality of code. The advantage of including the build process in your pipeline is that it automates developer contributions and provides tools to standardize software quality and environments.
Testing stage
All too often, development teams move directly to the deploy stage. This is a mistake because the testing stage is where the key benefits of CI/CD shine. Testing is a complex and repetitive process that your CI/CD pipeline helps automates for you. There are several different types of testing all of which can be used together in an automated continuous integration pipeline. You can combine unit testing with integration testing to provide the most test coverage possible. Testing also contributes vital data about software performance that can immediately be integrated back into the code. The result of testing is high quality software with fewer and fewer bugs.
Deploy stage
The deploy stage is where you can orchestrate software releases to production or other environments. Your pipeline can be configured to deploy code on a schedule, roll out software to all customers or just a select group, and even roll back releases when there is a problem. You get to decide what the best strategy is for getting updated software to your customers. It can all be automated as part of your CI/CD pipeline.
Complete Lifecycle of CI/CD
In the Build phase You get all the features of that code from various branches of the repository, which merge them and finally use a compiler to compile it.
Once the build phase is over, then you move on to the testing phase. In this phase, we have various kinds of testing, one of them is the unit test
When the test is completed, you move on to the Release/deploy phase, where you deploy it into a staging area. Here, you can view the code, or you can view the app in a simulator.
After the deploy stage, you can run another set of a sanity test. If everything is accepted, then it can be deployed to production.
After the production stage dev team can monitor and measure performance and if there is any error comes the process re-iterates if required.
Build a CI/CD pipeline using Jenkins
Step 1 : create a SpringBoot project
You can create any SpringBoot project in your IDE using SpringBoot or SpringBoot io. as you can see in the below image i made a simple project using SpringBoot plugin.
Step 2 : create a Jenkins file
You need to create jenkins file in your project that will work as a pipeline script.
Step 3 : create a new GitHub Repository
You need to create new GitHub repository on which you can host your project from your IDE. after making your repository commit your code from the local system into repository.
Step 4 : Login to Jenkins and click on “New Item.”
Login to Jenkins and click on “New Item.”
Step 5 : Give name to your pipeline
Select the “Pipeline” option from the menu, provide a name for the pipeline, and click “OK.”
Step 6 : Modify General tab
Provide your GitHub repository URL in the field of Project url and select on Github project and in the build trigger section click on the GitHub hook trigger for GITScm polling.
Step 7 : Modify Pipeline tab
select Pipeline script from SCM in Definition and Git in SCM than provide your Repository URL in Repositories section.
specify your branch name weather it's main or master. after that click on apply and save.
Step 8 : Click on Build now
Once your click on build pipeline you will get window with all the stages of pipeline
Here #4 is a current running build and it shows us different stages of pipeline. when you commit your code from your IDE it will automatically run in background. that's why it is known as automation tool. Below image showing us Build was successful.
Conclusion
CI/CD pipeline is a critical component of modern software development. It enables developers to automate the software delivery process, reduce manual intervention, and increase efficiency. Setting up a CI/CD pipeline involves several stages, including code repository, build, test, deploy, and monitoring. By setting up CI/CD pipeline, you can ensure that code changes are tested and validated, and any issues are identified and addressed early in the process, resulting in improved code quality and faster release cycles.
Source code link : click here
Comments