Can you explain what is meant by continuous integration in software development?

Continuous Integration (CI) is a software development practice where code changes are regularly and automatically integrated into a shared codebase. The main goal of CI is to quickly detect errors and conflicts during code merging, which improves quality and development speed.

The CI process typically includes:

• Automatic building of the project with each code change.
• Running automated tests to verify correctness.
• Providing quick feedback to developers about the build and test status.

Example: a developer pushes changes to the repository, and the CI server automatically triggers a build and tests. If something goes wrong, the team is immediately notified and can quickly fix the issue.