Continuous Integration

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What Does Continuous Integration Mean?

In software development, continuous integration (CI) is the practice of regularly committing code changes to a version control system that can test and deploy code automatically. The term is often mentioned in tandem with continuous delivery, an approach in which code is tested automatically, but is released into production manually.

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CI/CD uses an iterative approach to releasing code and can be contrasted with the traditional waterfall method of software development.

Techopedia Explains Continuous Integration

Development teams use the continuous integration approach to software development because it allows them to develop in a quicker and more efficient manner than if they work separately for longer periods of time.

Developers using this approach submit changes to a source code repository, at which time the existing code base changes and new code can be added along with other resources that look for potential coding conflicts. There are also commercial CI servers that development teams can use to facilitate the CI process.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.