The latest News and Information on Continuous Integration and Development, and related technologies.
Continuous integration (CI) is the process of integrating changes from multiple contributors to create a single software project. A key component for a smooth CI pipeline is testing. Tests prove that the code does exactly what it says on the tin and that it’s safe to merge the code into the central repository. Tests also anticipate edge cases and ensure that the code handles such cases in a deterministic manner.
DevOps practices in software development have revolutionized the way updates are released. However, many companies entrenched in ITIL practices find it challenging to seamlessly integrate with the DevOps practice of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CI/CD). This is because ITIL focuses on stability, which suits older systems, while DevOps is ideal for modern setups with its agile, automated practices.
When a headhunter reached out to me about the CEO role at Cloudsmith (where I started in August!), one of the first things I did was sign up for a trial account. The product's depth and sophistication really impressed me, and contributed to my decision to go ahead with the interviews. (Glad I did.) They were right; our web interface is still largely a Django web app, tightly coupled to the back end, and you can see the Bootstrap showing everywhere.
When it comes to building and delivering modern web applications, the importance of continuous integration cannot be overemphasized. With the rapid pace of software development, ensuring that every change in your codebase is thoroughly tested and seamlessly integrated into your project is essential for maintaining a robust and dependable application.
Understanding the impact of each of your deployments is crucial, especially as they become increasingly frequent. Chances are, your team is either aiming to increase shipping velocity or has already started deploying "continuously" (which is to say, multiple times a day). The biggest tech teams at the likes of Amazon and Google deploy thousands of times daily, and Atlassian has found that 75% of enterprise DevOps teams call deployment frequency their most important success criteria. And while CD comes with a host of well-established benefits, it also introduces a heightened risk of introducing new errors and issues.
