What is CI/CD and why is it needed?

CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment) is a practice and set of processes in software development aimed at automating the building, testing, and delivery of software products.

• Continuous Integration (CI) — regular merging of developers' changes into a shared branch, often several times a day. Automated builds and tests are triggered to quickly identify errors.

• Continuous Delivery (CD) — after successful build and testing, a new version of the application is automatically prepared for release and can be deployed at any moment with a click.

• Continuous Deployment (CD) — automatic release of each successfully tested version into production without manual intervention.

Why CI/CD is needed:

• Accelerates the development process and release of new features.
• Improves code quality through automated testing.
• Reduces risks of errors during releases.
• Provides quick feedback to developers.
• Automates routine operations, reducing team workload.

Example of a simple CI/CD pipeline (on GitHub Actions):

name: CI
on: [push]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Build
        run: make build
      - name: Run tests
        run: make test

Thus, CI/CD helps make the development process more reliable, faster, and predictable.