CI/CD

Complete technical reference for Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Deployment.

Sections

File	Topics
Concepts & Goals	CI definition, Continuous Delivery vs Deployment, goals, core feedback loop
Pipeline Architecture	Stages, pipeline types (monolithic/multi-stage/distributed/event-driven), triggers, pipeline as code

File	Topics
Build Stage	Dependency install, caching strategy, incremental builds, Docker build, reproducibility
Artifact Management	Artifact types, semantic versioning, container registry, image tagging, retention, promotion pattern

File	Topics
Test Layers & Strategy	Unit/integration/API/E2E/contract tests in pipeline, parallel execution, selective execution
Quality Gates	Pass rate gate, coverage threshold, performance SLO gate, vulnerability gate, required status checks

File	Topics
Deployment Strategies	Recreate, Rolling, Blue-Green, Canary, Feature Flags — with code and decision guide
Infrastructure & IaC	Docker best practices, Kubernetes manifests, Terraform, CloudFormation, IaC in pipeline
Environment Management	Dev/Staging/Production model, twelve-factor config, secrets management, environment parity, drift

File	Topics
Security	Secret vaults, rotation, dependency scanning, SAST (Bandit/Semgrep), image scanning (Trivy), supply chain
Observability	Pipeline logs, pipeline metrics, deployment health monitoring, DORA metrics, notification strategy
Pipeline Performance	Parallelisation, dependency caching, Docker layer cache, path filtering, duration targets

File	Topics
Release Management	SemVer, conventional commits + semantic-release, release trains vs on-demand, CHANGELOG
Rollback Strategies	Blue-green instant rollback, Kubernetes rollout undo, canary abort, DB migration rollback, runbook
Testing in Production	Smoke tests, synthetic monitoring, canary validation, post-deploy observability window

File	Topics
Advanced Patterns	GitOps (Argo CD), trunk-based development, feature toggles, environment promotion, monorepo pipelines
Failure Handling	Retry strategies, pipeline recovery, partial failure, always-run cleanup, incident response
Anti-Patterns & Risks	Slow pipelines, manual steps, no tests, no rollback, environment drift, secrets in code, risk register
Real-World Decisions	Microservices/monolith/frontend architectures, staff-level heuristics, decision factors, maturity stages

I need to...	Go to
Understand CI vs CD vs continuous deployment	Concepts & Goals
Design a pipeline from scratch	Pipeline Architecture
Speed up the build stage	Build Stage
Set up Docker image publishing	Artifact Management
Run tests properly in CI	Test Layers & Strategy
Block merges on quality issues	Quality Gates
Choose a deployment strategy	Deployment Strategies
Manage secrets safely	Security
Make pipeline faster	Pipeline Performance
Plan a rollback	Rollback Strategies
Monitor after deploy	Testing in Production
Understand GitOps	Advanced Patterns
Avoid common mistakes	Anti-Patterns & Risks