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Automation: Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery

In today’s fast-paced software development world, organisations need efficient and reliable methods to build, test, and deliver their applications. Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) are key practices that help streamline the development process.

WHAT IS CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION & CONTINUOUS DELIVERY?

All of our customers benefit from continuous integration and continuous delivery. But what does that mean? It means we’re constantly checking, reviewing and delivering our software applications.

When waiting for a release day to merge changes to your software project or build, integration challenges may occur.

With Continuous Integration (CI), developers run automated tests against the build to continuously merge the changes and check the software application is running as expected. This avoids integration challenges, making projects and deployments a smoother process.

Continuous Delivery (CD) uses an automated release process whereby code changes can be deployed to a test and/or production environment after each build stage. The changes can then be deployed on demand, at any time.

Continuous Deployment, or automated deployment, is also possible by automating this release process.

Together, continuous integration, continuous delivery and automated deployment can provide a solid automated release process, allowing software applications to be deployed at any time.

All of our customers benefit from continuous integration and continuous delivery. But what does that mean? It means we’re constantly checking, reviewing and delivering our applications.

THE ROLE OF CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION TOOLS

Continuous integration tools play a crucial role in facilitating CI and CD practices. When using continuous integration tools, from the moment code is committed by a developer, automation takes over and notifies the team. Whilst this code is under peer review, our systems are also ensuring the code complies and its tests pass. It sounds simple but this practice ensures that at least 80% of any concerns with quality, design and bugs are caught and resolved. Before they even hit a server for review.

Once this stage has completed, we automatically bundle the software application into an ‘artefact’ which lets us push builds to QA, staging and production environments at the click of a button.  We can also run automated tests that check through all key user journeys over and over again. Every time we prepare a release. And this is all performed using well defined, repeatable processes.

ENSURING RELIABLE DEPLOYMENTS

Even with robust automation in place, it’s essential to account for potential issues. Each release is uniquely identified, allowing for easy deployment and rollback of software as needed. 

For larger and more complex systems involving multiple stakeholders, feature flags are employed to enable or disable specific features in different environments. This flexibility accommodates varying deadlines, approval windows, and launch dates, simplifying the software development lifecycle and enabling frequent deployments.

BENEFITS OF CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION TOOLS

By leveraging continuous integration tools, organisations can reap several benefits:

  1. Gated builds and build automation: automation streamlines the build process, ensuring code quality and reducing manual errors.
  2. Automated deployment: continuous integration tools enable seamless and efficient deployment of software applications to various environments with just a click of a button.
  3. Secured configuration and access controls: these tools provide mechanisms to secure configurations and control access, safeguarding sensitive information and ensuring compliance.
  4. Cloud automation and server automation: continuous integration tools support deploying applications in cloud environments and pre-provisioned Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) environments, saving time and effort.

HOW CODEMINERS CAN HELP YOU WITH CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION & CONTINUOUS DELIVERY

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery practices, coupled with the use of continuous integration tools, enable seamless integration, testing, and deployment of software applications. By adopting these practices, businesses can enhance productivity, improve software quality, and achieve faster and more reliable releases. As software development continues to evolve, leveraging continuous integration tools becomes increasingly crucial for successful and efficient development lifecycles.

At Codeminers, we have been building and testing custom software for decades. If you’d like some help with your software project, drop us a message and we’ll be glad to offer our advice.