Continuous Integration (CI) is a software development practice that makes sure developers integrate their code into a shared repository as and when they are done working on the feature. Each integration is verified by means of an automated build process that allows teams to detect problems in their code at a very early stage rather than finding them after the deployment.
Based on the above flow, we can have a brief overview of the CI process.
* Developers regularly check out code into their local workspaces and work on the features assigned to them.
* Once they are done working on it, the code is committed and pushed to the remote shared repository which is handled by making use of effective version control tools like git.
* The CI server keeps track of the changes done to the shared repository and it pulls the changes as soon as it detects them.
* The CI server then triggers the build of the code and runs unit and integration test cases if set up.
* The team is informed of the build results. In case of the build failure, the team has to work on fixing the issue as early as possible, and then the process repeats.
