Glossary

CI/CD

CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery) is the practice of automatically building, testing, and delivering code after every commit. The goal: shorten the time between writing code and it reaching production, catching problems as early as possible.

CI — Continuous Integration

Every push triggers an automated pipeline: install dependencies, static analysis, unit tests, integration tests. If something breaks, the developer finds out immediately — not weeks later.

CD — Continuous Delivery/Deployment

After a successful CI run, code is delivered to a server automatically or semi-automatically. Delivery — a human approves the deploy; Deployment — fully automatic.

Popular tools

GitHub Actions — built into GitHub, free for public repositories
GitLab CI — powerful, with runners on your own infrastructure
Jenkins — self-hosted, widely used in enterprise
CircleCI / Bitbucket Pipelines — cloud-based solutions