[Avg. reading time: 15 minutes]

CICD

A CI/CD pipeline is a development practice focused on one core goal:

Ship high-quality features to production faster and more reliably.

Without CI/CD, every step in the software lifecycle is manual: building code, running tests, and deploying changes. This slows teams down and introduces human error.

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What Happens Without CI/CD?

  • Developers manually trigger builds
  • Testing is inconsistent or delayed
  • Deployments are error-prone
  • Releases take longer and break more often

CI/CD fixes this by automating the entire flow.

Continuous Integration (CI)

  • Automatically builds and tests code whenever changes are pushed to a shared repository
  • Detects issues early before they reach production
  • Ensures new code doesn’t break existing functionality

Keep the codebase stable at all times

Continuous Delivery (CD)

  • Automatically deploys validated code to staging or testing environments
  • Production deployment is still a manual decision

Always be ready to release.

Continuous Deployment

  • Extends Continuous Delivery
  • Every successful change is automatically deployed to production

Remove manual steps and release continuously.

There are many CI/CD tools available. They differ mainly in hosting model and integration ecosystem.

Categories of CI/CD Tools

Self-Hosted / On-Prem

  • Jenkins

  • CircleCI (can be self-hosted, though mostly SaaS now)

  • You need full control

  • Strict security/compliance

  • Custom infrastructure

SaaS / Web-Based

  • GitHub Actions

  • GitLab CI/CD

  • You want quick setup

  • Tight integration with source control

Cloud-Native Tools

  • AWS CodeBuild / CodePipeline

  • Azure DevOps

  • Google Cloud Build

  • You’re already in that cloud

  • Need deep integration with cloud services

GitHub Actions

One of the most widely used CI/CD tools today.

  • Native integration with GitHub
  • Free tier available
  • Huge marketplace of reusable actions

Core Five Concepts

Workflows

  • Define the automation pipeline
  • Stored as YAML files in .github/workflows/
  • Think: entire pipeline definition

Jobs

  • A workflow is made up of one or more jobs
  • Jobs run independently (can be parallel)
  • Each job contains multiple steps

Steps

  • Individual tasks inside a job
  • Example: install dependencies, run tests

Events (Triggers)

Trigger the execution of the job.

  • on push / pull
  • on schedule
  • on workflow_dispatch (Manual Trigger)

Actions

Reusable building blocks.

Example:

  • checkout repo
  • setup Python
  • deploy apps

https://github.com/features/actions

Runners

Remote computer that GitHub Actions uses to execute the jobs.

Github-Hosted Runners

  • ubuntu-latest
  • windows-latest
  • macos-latest

Self-Hosted Runners

  • Specific OS that Github does not offer.
  • Connection to a private network/environment.
  • To save costs for projects with high usage. (Enterprise plans are expensive)

YAML (Yet Another Markup Language)

  • Human-readable
  • Key-value structure
  • Indentation matters

https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/yaml/

DEMO

Multiple Runners Demo

https://github.com/gchandra10/github-actions-multiple-runners-demo

Rust DEMO

git clone https://github.com/gchandra10/rust-ci-demo

Sample

name: Rust

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ main ]

jobs:
  build_step:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - name: Discord - Process started
      env:
        DISCORD_WEBHOOK: ${{ secrets.DISCORD_WEBHOOK }}
      uses: Ilshidur/action-discord@master
      with:
        args: ' :information_source: The Calculator App {{ EVENT_PAYLOAD.repository.full_name }} workflow (${{ github.run_id }}) was triggered by ${{ github.actor }}'

    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - name: Install Rust
      uses: actions-rs/toolchain@v1
      with:
        toolchain: stable
        override: true

    - name: Build
      uses: actions-rs/cargo@v1
      with:
        command: build
        args: --release

    - name: Run tests
      uses: actions-rs/cargo@v1
      with:
        command: test

    # - name: Format the Code
    #   uses: actions-rs/cargo@v1
    #   with:
    #     command: fmt

    - name: Send Discord Failure Notification
      # https://github.com/marketplace/actions/actions-for-discord
      if: failure()
      env:
        DISCORD_WEBHOOK: ${{ secrets.DISCORD_WEBHOOK }}
      uses: Ilshidur/action-discord@master
      with:
        args: '@here :x: The Calculator App integration {{ EVENT_PAYLOAD.repository.full_name }} test failed. Check the Run id ${{ github.run_id }} on Github for details.'

    - name: Send Discord Success Notification
      # https://github.com/marketplace/actions/actions-for-discord
      if: success()
      env:
        DISCORD_WEBHOOK: ${{ secrets.DISCORD_WEBHOOK }}
      uses: Ilshidur/action-discord@master
      with:
        args: ' :white_check_mark: The Calculator App {{ EVENT_PAYLOAD.repository.full_name }} - ${{ github.run_id }} successfully integrated and tested.'

    # - name: Generate Documentation
    #   uses: actions-rs/cargo@v1
    #   with:
    #     command: doc

    ## Not that popular these days.
    # - name: Send Email Notification on Failure
    #   if: failure()
    #   uses: dawidd6/action-send-mail@v2
    #   with:
    #     server_address: ${{ secrets.EMAIL_SERVER }}
    #     server_port: ${{ secrets.EMAIL_PORT }}
    #     username: ${{ secrets.EMAIL_USERNAME }}
    #     password: ${{ secrets.EMAIL_PASSWORD }}
    #     subject: CI Failure in ${{ github.repository }}
    #     to: chandr34@rowan.edu
    #     from: chandr34@rowan.edu
    #     body: The Rust CI test failed. Check the details on GitHub.

#cicd #github

1: www.freecodecamp.org/Ver 2.2.2

Last change: 2026-04-22