Continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery/deployment (CD) — together referred to as CI/CD — is a software development principal or method in which automation is introduced into the entire lifecycle of software or application development, from testing to deployment. The automatic and continuous nature of CI/CD allows organizations to get software more quickly, efficiently and reliably into production and then out into the market.
More specifically, continuous integration meaning merges all validated working code into a shared mainline code several times a day, while continuous delivery refers to the practice of producing reliable software in short cycles that can be released — or delivered — at any time. The other “D” (deployment) comes into play here, because once the software is delivered, it can then be deployed. CD results in more predictable and on-demand software deployments.
