Continuous Integration — DevOps Practice

“The epiphany of integration points is that they control product development. They are the leverage points to improve the system. When timing of integration points slip, the project is in trouble.”

— Dantar Oosterwal, The Lean Machine

Continuous integration (CI) is a development method and one of DevOps practice in which developers must commit code to a shared version control repository (master/trunk) at least once a day. Because most current applications include writing code across several platforms and tools, the team requires a way to integrate and validate its modifications.

Why is it important?

To understand the importance of CI, let’s first discuss the problems that often arises due to traditional approach.Assume Emma and John are working on two separate features and creating code in their respective silos. Their strategy is to make their feature work with the existing code base. They will incorporate their efforts in a few weeks or months. It’s very likely that when they try to integrate their code, they’ll encounter problems or merge conflicts. This is only true for two developers, but in the actual world, merge conflicts are so complex that they result in longer code releases and higher failure rates, as they demand engineers to be sensitive and thoughtful about integrations. As the engineering team and codebase grow in size, these risks grow rapidly.

How does it work?

Developers use a version control system like Git to often commit to a shared repository with continuous integration. Developers can run local unit tests on their work as an extra layer of verification before merging it before each change. A continuous integration service develops and runs unit tests on new code changes automatically, highlighting any mistakes as soon as they occur.

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From, Shaily Rajwanshi ( Agile Coach and SAFe Trainer)