What is CI/CD?
CI/CD is a software development process that allows IT teams to deliver software changes frequently and reliably. Any software project typically has a team of developers working to improve and maintain the software in a draft or developer-only environment. They make code changes in the dev environment and then move the final version to production, where end users can access updates. This process has several steps, from code building and compilation to testing, packaging dependencies, and version control.
CI/CD indicates that automation is employed through this software change process, resulting in continuous delivery of application updates to end users. It streamlines software delivery workflows to decrease complexity and increase efficiency at scale. Some teams may deliver changes several times daily, ensuring users experience a continuously improving software application.
What are the benefits of CI/CD?
CI/CD implementations bring the following value to organizations.
Accelerate feature release
Continuous delivery allows your teams to gain a competitive edge by accelerating efforts to implement software feature releases. Conventionally, software teams would take weeks or months to roll out an update because they work on the changes in silo. Moreover, some changes are complex and require more time with traditional development approaches.
With a CI/CD workflow, developers can break software modification tasks into smaller, more manageable parts and distribute them across the team. In addition, CI/CD makes software development more transparent and trackable, allowing you to predict and commit to delivery milestones confidently. The accelerated software development lifecycle also indirectly benefits customers, who now have faster access to updates.
Improve software quality
Introducing smaller, more frequent updates reduces the risks of latent software bugs, vulnerabilities, and other issues that escape in-house testing. When developers make changes to the codebase, the CI/CD pipeline automates software testing so that developers can identify and fix any anomalies immediately. Instead of performing software tests after all changes are made, developers can test the code they write and resolve issues on the go.
This way, companies can commit to better software quality, leading to happier users. Even if some issues slip through the testing stage, you can roll back the changes to a previously functional software version. This gives developers ample time to resolve bugs without disrupting service availability.
Enhance developer experience
Software developers often spend time on repetitive or laborious tasks like debugging, testing, and validation. These tasks can take up significant time that they could spend on higher-value work. Left unaddressed, developers might experience stress, which could lead to burnout and a drop in productivity.
Integrating continuous delivery into the software development process reduces your team’s workload. Developers use CI/CD tools to automate manual tasks that took up much of their time. More importantly, they spend less time fixing software issues that could have easily been prevented. As a result, your software development team’s morale increases, which leads to better business outcomes.
How does CI/CD work?
CI/CD automates build and deployment processes to accelerate the application development cycle and software updates. It bridges the gap between development and operation teams by enabling faster feedback across a transparent and scalable modern software development practice. Below, we share core components of the CI/CD pipeline.
Continuous integration
Continuous integration automates the way developers consolidate changes in a shared code repository. A repository consists of source code, libraries, test scripts, and other resources for a successful build. Continuous integration allows developers to deliver code more frequently without compromising quality.
Conventionally, developers would need to wait for an agreed-upon time before compiling, building, and testing the changes they made in the build server. The delay might cause significant challenges, such as code conflicts, which become harder to solve over time.
Code conflicts are incidents where changes made by one developer cause other parts of the application to fail. There is a greater risk of code conflicts when multiple developers merge their code with the shared repository. Continuous integration makes code releases happen faster as developers can work concurrently without breaking others’ code.
Continuous delivery
Continuous delivery ensures that the code validated at the continuous integration phase is ready for production deployment. After merging the changes at the CI stage, the code undergoes further automated testing at the continuous delivery stage.
There, development teams automate several tests, including unit, integration, regression, and API reliability tests. These tests help developers identify problems early on and rework problematic code. Once validated, developers automatically provision the infrastructure, such as serverless resources, cloud servers, and other resources the application needs to run. Then, the operation teams can manually deploy the application in the production environment.
Continuous deployment
Continuous deployments take code automation further by removing manual human intervention in the deployment phases. Like continuous delivery, continuous deployment relies on automated testing tools to produce high-quality software. However, instead of waiting for the operation team’s approval, the DevOps team can set criteria for approving the application, which, once validated, is deployed to end users.
What are the best practices in CI/CD?
Below are ways to optimize your CI/CD workflow for efficiency, cost reduction, and timely software delivery.
Maintain a single repository
Start with a single shared repository. Then, create each developer's branches, or copies of the central repository. Avoid creating more subbranches or additional local copies to prevent confusion and miscommunication. Every developer makes and tests changes on their own branch and then merges them with the central repository.
Left-shift application testing
Make continuous testing part of the code integration workflow by shifting testing to the left. For example, developers automate code quality checks, static code analysis, and other tests immediately after editing code. To accelerate the software release process, we recommend using testing scripts. Testing scripts guide automated CI/CD tools in running software tests. Any code that fails pre-build tests will stop subsequent processes in the pipeline until developers fix it.
Make small changes
Avoid making large changes in an update because developers might need more time to resolve issues like code conflicts. Instead, make small incremental changes to fix problems and quickly push the release to customers. In addition, you can roll back small changes without significantly impacting the user experience.
Prioritize transparency
Provide all developers access to the shared source code repository and track changes made by the teams. With a version control system, you can identify specific code changes, the date they were made, and the developer responsible. Additionally, facilitate feedback and communication between developers so that everyone is on the same page when working on updates.
Test in a production-like environment
Testing code in the production environment isn’t feasible because it risks disrupting business operations. However, developers can create a test environment that mimics real-life conditions. Testing applications in controlled but realistic conditions allows you to spot code issues that escape early-stage testing and reduce deployment risks.
How can AWS support your CI/CD requirements?
AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed continuous integration service that compiles source code, runs tests, and produces packages ready for deployment. It eliminates the need to provision, manage, and scale your build servers.
AWS CodePipeline is a scalable end-to-end CI/CD solution that helps you automate software build, testing, and deployment. You can model and visualize the full release process and let AWS CodePipeline build, test, and deploy your application according to the defined workflow whenever a code changes occur. You can integrate partner tools and your custom tools into any stage of the release process.
Amazon CodeCatalyst is an integrated DevOps service that provides one place to plan work, collaborate on code, and build, test, and deploy applications with CI/CD tools. You can:
- Create a new project from existing language- or tool-based project blueprints to get ready-made source repositories with sample code, build scripts, deployment actions, virtual servers, serverless resources, and more.
- Use Amazon Q Developer, the AI agent for software development, to go from an idea in an issue to a fully tested, merge-ready application code with just natural language inputs, in just a few clicks.
- Integrate AWS resources with your projects by connecting your AWS accounts to your Amazon CodeCatalyst space.
With all these stages and aspects of an application’s lifecycle in one tool, you can deliver software quickly and confidently.
Get started with CI/CD on AWS by creating a free account today!