Continuous delivery

Continuous Delivery process diagram

Continuous delivery (CD) is a software engineering approach in which teams produce software in short cycles, ensuring that the software can be reliably released at any time. It aims at building, testing, and releasing software with greater speed and frequency. The approach helps reduce the cost, time, and risk of delivering changes by allowing for more incremental updates to applications in production.

Overview

Continuous delivery is an extension of continuous integration (CI). It ensures that the software is always in a deployable state throughout its lifecycle. This is achieved by automating the testing and deployment processes, which allows for frequent and reliable releases.

Key Practices

Several key practices are essential for continuous delivery:

• **Automated Testing**: Automated tests are run to validate the software at every stage of the delivery pipeline.
• **Continuous Integration**: Developers frequently integrate their code into a shared repository, where automated builds and tests are run.
• **Automated Deployment**: The deployment process is automated to ensure that the software can be deployed to any environment at any time.
• **Version Control**: All code changes are tracked using a version control system, such as Git.
• **Configuration Management**: Configuration files are managed and versioned to ensure consistency across different environments.

Benefits

Continuous delivery offers several benefits:

• **Reduced Risk**: Smaller, incremental changes are easier to test and less likely to introduce bugs.
• **Faster Time to Market**: Frequent releases allow for quicker feedback and faster delivery of new features.
• **Improved Quality**: Automated testing and continuous integration help catch issues early in the development process.
• **Better Collaboration**: Teams can work more effectively with a shared understanding of the current state of the software.

Challenges

Implementing continuous delivery can present several challenges:

• **Cultural Change**: Teams need to adopt a mindset of continuous improvement and collaboration.
• **Tooling and Infrastructure**: Setting up the necessary tools and infrastructure can be complex and time-consuming.
• **Testing**: Ensuring comprehensive test coverage and maintaining test suites can be challenging.

Related Concepts

• DevOps
• Agile software development
• Continuous deployment
• Software development lifecycle
• Build automation

See Also

• Continuous integration
• DevOps
• Agile software development
• Continuous deployment
• Software development lifecycle
• Build automation