Continuous Delivery and Deployment#
See also: concepts, computing, continuous-integration
Continuous delivery#
Continuous delivery is an extension of continuous integration since it automatically deploys all code changes to a testing and/or production environment after the build stage.
This means that on top of automated testing, you have an automated release process and you can deploy your application any time by clicking a button.
In theory, with continuous delivery, you can decide to release daily, weekly, fortnightly, or whatever suits your business requirements. However, if you truly want to get the benefits of continuous delivery, you should deploy to production as early as possible to make sure that you release small batches that are easy to troubleshoot in case of a problem.
Continous deployment#
Continuous deployment goes one step further than continuous delivery. With this practice, every change that passes all stages of your production pipeline is released to your customers. There's no human intervention, and only a failed test will prevent a new change to be deployed to production.
Continuous deployment is an excellent way to accelerate the feedback loop with your customers and take pressure off the team as there isn't a "release day" anymore. Developers can focus on building software, and they see their work go live minutes after they've finished working on it.