Soft­ware devel­op­ment is con­stantly evolving, and pro­cess auto­ma­tion is play­ing a cru­cial role. Here at ClearPeaks we fully recog­nise the import­ance of seam­less code integ­ra­tion and the effi­cient deploy­ment of solu­tions to the end user. Lots of solu­tions have been developed to sim­plify this work­flow, ensur­ing that we stay at the fore­front of tech­no­logy and ser­vice excellence. 

What is CI/CD?

It stands for Con­tinu­ous Integ­ra­tion and Con­tinu­ous Deliv­ery, but what exactly does this mean? 

CI/CD rep­res­ents a set of prac­tices and tools that have revolu­tion­ised soft­ware devel­op­ment, allow­ing developers to auto­mate vari­ous aspects of the soft­ware deliv­ery pro­cess, from code integ­ra­tion to the final deploy­ment. With CI/CD, devel­op­ment teams can cut down on manual tasks, col­lab­or­ate bet­ter, and accel­er­ate the deliv­ery of new fea­tures and updates to their end users. 

Let’s look at the two parts! 

CI (Con­tinu­ous Integration) 

CI is the prac­tice of integ­rat­ing code changes in a repos­it­ory or ver­sion con­trol sys­tem. It’s typ­ic­ally used by mul­tiple developers, each of whom merges changes into a com­mon code­base as part of their daily work­flow. The pro­cess ensures that newly merged code does not intro­duce errors, or con­flict with exist­ing code, and sta­bil­ity in the code­base is main­tained by trig­ger­ing auto­mated build and test­ing processes. 

CD (Con­tinu­ous Delivery) 

CD, in con­junc­tion with CI, auto­mates the pro­vi­sion of infra­struc­ture and the release of applic­a­tions after they are built and tested. From infra­struc­ture pro­vi­sion to deploy­ment in test or pro­duc­tion envir­on­ments, this pro­cess cov­ers dif­fer­ent stages. 

In the release phase, the soft­ware is con­figured for deploy­ment to pro­duc­tion at any time; deploy­ments, both manual and auto­mated, can be triggered as required. 

Con­tinu­ous deploy­ment enables DevOps teams to release applic­a­tions auto­mat­ic­ally, meet­ing qual­ity cri­teria and speed­ing up the deliv­ery of new fea­tures to users. 

Bene­fits and Draw­backs of CI/CD 

  • Faster devel­op­ment: CI/CD pipelines auto­mate the pro­cess of build­ing and test­ing code whenever changes are made in the repository. 
  • Reduce errors: CI/CD sup­ports fre­quent test­ing, mak­ing it easier to detect bugs or errors. 
  • Con­sist­ency: CI/CD pipelines define stand­ard­ised pro­cesses for build­ing, test­ing, and deploy­ing code, and this con­sist­ency helps to main­tain a uni­form qual­ity across devel­op­ment, sta­ging, and pro­duc­tion environments. 
  • Increased col­lab­or­a­tion: CI/CD pro­motes the concept of the cross-func­tional team, where developers, test­ers, and oper­a­tions per­son­nel work together, encour­aging a more hol­istic approach to soft­ware development. 

How­ever, there are also some drawbacks: 

  • Com­plex­ity and the learn­ing curve: Imple­ment­ing CI/CD pipelines can be com­plex, espe­cially for teams new to the concept. Learn­ing the tools and best prac­tices can take both time and effort. 
  • Ini­tial setup: Set­ting up a robust CI/CD infra­struc­ture can be time-con­sum­ing and resource-intens­ive, and may also mean changes to exist­ing work­flows and tools. 
  • Infra­struc­ture cost: Main­tain­ing CI/CD infra­struc­ture, espe­cially in the cloud, can lead to addi­tional costs, and the use of CI/CD ser­vices may also incur fees. 

There are mul­tiple CI/CD tools avail­able to developers. In this blog post we‘ll be diving into Git­Hub Actions. But first, take a look at First step towards DataOps – CI/CD on Azure Data Fact­ory where we get into the details of CI/CD with Azure

Git­Hub Actions 

Git­Hub Actions is an auto­ma­tion and work­flow orches­tra­tion tool provided by Git­Hub, enabling developers to auto­mate vari­ous aspects of their soft­ware work­flows dir­ectly within their Git­Hub repos­it­or­ies. This tool is spe­cific­ally designed to facil­it­ate pro­cesses such as build­ing, test­ing, and deploy­ing the code­base, stream­lin­ing these oper­a­tions seamlessly. 

Why use Git­Hub Actions? 

  • Integ­ra­tion with Git­Hub: Git­Hub Actions allows you to define CI/CD pipelines dir­ectly in your Git­Hub repos­it­or­ies, mak­ing it easy to access and man­age your work­flows within the same envir­on­ment as your code. 
  • Flex­ib­il­ity: Git­Hub Actions offers a high degree of flex­ib­il­ity when it comes to defin­ing your auto­ma­tion work­flows: you can cre­ate cus­tom work­flows to auto­mate a wide range of tasks, from build­ing and test­ing code to deploy­ing applic­a­tions or even auto­mat­ing doc­u­ment­a­tion generation. 
  • Diverse event trig­gers: These trig­gers allow you to auto­mate pro­cesses based on real-time changes and activ­it­ies within your pro­ject, mak­ing it a power­ful tool for con­tinu­ous integ­ra­tion and deployment. 
  • Third-party integ­ra­tion: Git­Hub Actions sup­ports third-party integ­ra­tions with numer­ous ser­vices and tools, mean­ing you can eas­ily integ­rate and auto­mate pro­cesses involving external ser­vices, cloud plat­forms, data­bases, and other tools that your pro­ject relies on. 
  • Sched­uled work­flows: Git­Hub Actions enables you to sched­ule work­flows to run at spe­cific times or inter­vals, espe­cially use­ful for tasks like reg­u­lar data backups, data­base main­ten­ance, or gen­er­at­ing reports on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. 

Cre­at­ing a Git­Hub Actions Workflow 

Firstly, we cre­ate a new repos­it­ory where we’ll store our Angu­lar applic­a­tion. Once the Angu­lar pro­ject has been developed and con­nec­ted to a Git­Hub repos­it­ory, we’ll need to cre­ate a new folder named git­hub and a dir­ect­ory within it called work­flows. Inside this dir­ect­ory we then cre­ate a YAML file where we’ll define the logic of this workflow:

Now we need to modify the con­fig­ur­a­tion so that spe­cific com­mands are executed to test and build our pro­ject. T do so, we must add the fol­low­ing com­mands to our package.json file:

Once the con­fig­ur­a­tion is com­plete, the final step is to cre­ate the work­flow itself. We’ll return to the pre­vi­ously cre­ated ci_cd_pipeline.yml file and add this code:

Now our pipeline is con­figured to test and build our Angu­lar pro­ject whenever there is a push or a pull request to the main branch. In the repos­it­ory, nav­ig­ate to the Actions sec­tion. Here, after cre­at­ing a pull request or dir­ectly push­ing to the main branch, you can observe the work­flow pro­cess that we set up in the pre­vi­ous step:

Con­clu­sion 

In con­clu­sion, CI/CD is more than just a devel­op­ment meth­od­o­logy: it’s a mind­set that encour­ages innov­a­tion, agil­ity, and reli­ab­il­ity, ensur­ing that soft­ware devel­op­ment keeps pace with the demands of the digital era, where change is con­stant, and user expect­a­tions are higher than ever.

The import­ance of CI/CD can­not be over­stated. Its adop­tion is not a mat­ter of if but when, and those who integ­rate it into their soft­ware devel­op­ment pro­cesses will find them­selves bet­ter equipped to thrive in the com­pet­it­ive land­scape of today’s digital world.

Here at ClearPeaks we always strive for suc­cess and that’s why we place enorm­ous import­ance on the dif­fer­ent aspects of soft­ware devel­op­ment, to deliver the best product to our cus­tom­ers, with  faster, more reli­able, and more respons­ive applications. 

Are you ready to stream­line your devel­op­ment pro­cess with power­ful CI/CD solu­tions? Our team of experts is here to guide you through every step, from ini­tial setup to full deploy­ment, so reach out today for a consultation!