Continuous Integration (CI) is a software development practice that involves frequently integrating code changes into a shared repository, often multiple times per day. The primary goal of CI is to ensure that code changes are thoroughly tested and validated before they are integrated into the main codebase. This helps to identify and fix integration issues early in the development cycle, before they become larger problems.
General steps:
Source code management: Developers frequently commit code changes to a shared repository, such as Git.
Build automation: When code changes are committed to the repository, a build server automatically compiles the code, runs automated tests, and produces a build artifact.
Testing: Automated tests, such as unit tests, integration tests, and acceptance tests, are run against the build artifact to ensure that the code changes are working as intended.
Notification: The results of the tests are automatically reported back to the development team, either via email, chat, or a dashboard.
Continuous Integration relies heavily on automation to ensure that the process is fast, reliable, and repeatable. It also promotes a culture of collaboration and communication among developers, as they are required to frequently integrate their code changes and work closely with each other to resolve any issues that arise.