The ultimate CI/CD resource guide

You've found the right place for content on continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD). We've gathered our highest-performing articles from the past year on this topic on Red Hat Developer. This article will introduce you to all things related to CI/CD.

What is CI/CD and why is it important for developers?

Continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) are development processes making use of automated tools to produce high-quality software.

CI ensures that any code submitted by each developer works together with all other code in the project. Typically, CI works by running regression tests.

CD involves further automation to make sure that the latest accepted versions of a project enter production, and that all the pieces deployed together are compatible.

Numerous tools, such as integrated development environments and version control systems, help you build software. But when it comes to creating software that customers trust—and even love—you need to pay attention to the details. A good CI/CD environment ensures that testing, integration, and deployment are fast, easy, and accurate. CI/CD allows you to iterate faster, build more reliable code, and deliver better customer experiences.

Recent articles to explore about CI/CD

Here are eight great Red Hat Developer articles on this topic:

• Deploy Helm charts with Jenkins CI/CD: Learn how to use Jenkins's CI/CD capabilities to deploy a Helm chart using a Red Hat OpenShift 4 cluster. Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes that uses a packaging format called charts. These charts have all of the Kubernetes resources required to deploy an application, such as deployments and services.

• A developer's guide to CI/CD and GitOps with Jenkins Pipelines: GitOps and CI/CD have a lot to offer each other. This article guides you through the use of a Jenkinsfile to create deployments that combine CI/CD and GitOps.

• Containerize .NET applications without writing Dockerfiles: Discover how to use a tool named dotnet build-image to create Dockerfiles and containerized images from .NET applications. You will also learn how to use this tool in a GitHub workflow to create an image from a .NET application and push it to a repository.

• Automate CI/CD on pull requests with Argo CD ApplicationSets: The quest to further automate building, testing, and deployment is inspiring new features in Argo CD, Kubernetes, and other tools. This article shows how to improve feature testing by automating builds and the creation of Kubernetes environments. ApplicationSets in Argo CD, together with Tekton, create a CI/CD system that includes feature branch testing on OpenShift.

• How to create a better front-end developer experience: Explore common pain points that can complicate the development process, and learn how to address them to foster better developer experiences. Take developing a form using React, for example. If developers can develop the form without difficulty, it will likely be a positive experience for the customer as well.

• OpenShift support for GitOps processes: This article explains how OpenShift's GitOps Operator works and highlights improvements in OpenShift 4.9 and 4.10. The article includes a video showing how to use the developer console to manage cluster configurations and deploy cloud-native applications using OpenShift. Follow up this article by trying out a learning path about GitOps.

• Integrate ISO 20022 payments messaging with CI/CD: An increasing number of financial institutions are embracing ISO 20022 standards for payments and securities transactions. This article shows how to use the message conversion platform from Trace Financial (a Red Hat ISV) and Red Hat Fuse to convert messages between the SWIFT MT and MX formats for financial data. Key benefits of the MX message set include the ability to capture richer data, flexibility, and a machine-readable format.

• Tools and practices for remote development teams: This article explores a few tools and practices that can help you work from home. Ideas include shared IDEs to facilitate collaboration, a repository of self-service and single-click workspaces for IDE consistency, and triggering CI/CD pipelines from source control systems to automate manual operations tasks.

The Developer Sandbox is a great place to start

Interested in developing your first application at no cost? Test out the Developer Sandbox on Red Hat OpenShift and learn by doing.