Continuous Integration | DevOps

A simple article on Continuous integration process involved in DevOps Culture.

Let's look out the method flow before diving into the Continuous Integration(CI) process..

Continuous Build | Continuous Integration | Continuous Delivery/Deployment | Continuous Monitor which leads to the entire stages of DevOps Methodology.

The point of the word Continuous is because each stages are completely Automated without any manual efforts unlike configuring and managing the infrastructure.

On behalf of above stages, the tools equipped are,

Git or Svn | Maven or Ant or Gradle | Jenkins or Bamboo | Docker or Kubernetes (Tomcat). Since this article is not about to point out the process of Continuous Delivery/Deployment we tend to stick into CI process.

Continuous Integration is a DevOps software development practice where developers regularly merge their code changes into a central repository, after which automated builds and tests are run.

Code - Build - Test - Report

Stage 1: Code

Developers innovate or write code, then push it to their specified Version Control System(VCS). Well, the codes will be reviewed by other devs and changes may occur to bring more productivity. Once the code is ready to build it is stepped into the Integration Tool like Jenkins | Bamboo for continuous process.

Build : Configuration of Build tools such as Maven, Ant, Gradle are integrated within CI tool and ready to build the required code.

Stage 2: CI Tool Configuration

On setting up CI tool for the code Build we can automate build stage easily with less complexity.

Build Trigger :

• Trigger is the best feature available in all sorts of CI tool to automate any kind of stages in SDLC or Devops culture.
• Trigger is used to pull the code from VCS (Git | Svn) and process the build according to the project flow. | Key - Poll SCM and Webhooks.
• Can trigger other projects at once when the current project stage completes its command stages.
• Remote Trigger is also a best way to trigger the stage (Build) with an external URL link provided in the configuration of CI within the project.

Stage 3: Continuous Integration Process

Once the CI stage is completed, the actual Continuous Integration takes place.

• The developers keep on changing the code and update their libraries to complete the project.
• When the devs upload their new or updated code into the VCS repository, CI tool (Jenkins) pulls the code from VCS and automates the Build Process immediately. Whenever the code gets committed into the repository the Integration between the VCS and CI Tool plays an important link to start the build.
• This automated process without manual trigger is called Continuous Integration.

On further, the project gets Deployed into the Staging or Pre-Production environment as per the DevOps stages. Those stages are also automated to end up the deliverance of the product on time to the client.

More importantly, Every stages from development till deployment are automated as though it is also called Continuous Integration.

Since this article is all about CI, we'll look the further DevOps stages (Continuous Delivery/Deployment and Continuous Monitor ) on the upcoming articles.

Thank You !!