What is continuous deployment?

This is a software development approach where each change that passes automated pipeline testing and is approved is automatically deployed to the production environment. The main difference from Continuous Delivery is the absence of a manual approval step before deployment to production.

Main stages:

1. Commit: Developer commits changes to the version control system (e.g., Git).
2. Build: Automatic build of the artifact (image, package, etc.).
3. Test: Run automated tests (unit, integration, functional, load, etc.).
4. Deploy: If all tests pass successfully, the artifact is automatically deployed to the production environment.

Key components:

• High level of automation.
• Reliable infrastructure.
• Use of Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) practices.
• Monitoring and logging for quick problem detection.
• Ability to quickly rollback.

# Example of a pipeline part in GitLab CI/CD
stages:
  - build
  - test
  - deploy

build_job:
  stage: build
  script:
    - echo "Building the application..."
    - # Build commands here

test_job:
  stage: test
  script:
    - echo "Running tests..."
    - # Test commands here
  only:
    - main # Trigger only for main branch

deploy_job:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - echo "Deploying to production..."
    - # Deployment commands here
  when: on_success # Deploy only if previous stages succeed
  only:
    - main

Advantages	Disadvantages
Fast release of new features/bug fixes	High requirements for test quality
Reduction of TTM (Time To Market)	Potential risk of deploying unwanted changes
Reduced risk with each deployment	Complexity of implementation without mature CI/CD processes
Quick feedback from users	Need for reliable monitoring and rollback