Continuous Integration (CI) is a DevOps practice that involves integrating code changes in a shared repository on a regular basis. It helps detect and address issues early in the development process while also improving the efficiency and quality of software development.
What is Continuous Integration (CI)?
Continuous integration (CI) is an essential part of software engineering. It is an approach designed to facilitate iterative development while mitigating risks and motivating developers to be highly productive. The primary goal of CI is to detect and address issues early in the development process before they become serious challenges.
CI is typically implemented using a continuous integration server, which monitors the shared code repository for changes and automatically triggers the build and testing process. This enables developers to receive immediate feedback on their code changes and identify and address any issues before they are integrated with the rest of the codebase.
One of the key benefits of this approach is that it helps minimize the resources required to integrate code changes, which are usually the primary reasons behind delays and issues in software development. By continuously incorporating code changes, this approach ensures that the software is always in a working state, improving the development process’s efficiency.
Using this approach, organizations and developers can also improve the overall quality of the software by identifying issues like syntax errors and broken dependencies early in the development process.
Why Use Continuous Integration (CI)?
There are several reasons why an increasing number of software development teams leverage Continuous Integration (CI). These include benefits like:
- Early detection of issues: It helps to detect and address issues early in the development process, reducing the likelihood of integration issues later on.
- Faster feedback and improved productivity: Because new code or code changes are integrated continuously, developers receive immediate feedback on their work. This simultaneously empowers them to spot and fix issues as they arise, improving efficiency and productivity.
- Higher-quality software: By catching issues early in the development process, CI can help to deliver higher-quality software that is more reliable and easier to maintain.
- Facilitates collaboration: This DevOps approach encourages collaboration between team members by making it easier to share code changes and receive feedback from others.
- Increased customer satisfaction: By adopting CI, teams can focus on regularly delivering software changes to production environments. This approach can help reduce time to market and improve customer satisfaction.
Continuous Integration with Incredibuild
Incredibuild accelerates your development on-prem and on the cloud, letting you build faster, iterate more, and release great products. With Incredibuild for cloud, you can accelerate your CI pipelines and remove bottlenecks that could impact your time to market and ability to innovate and iterate. Learn more about Incredibuild for CI here.