> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://asafahmadov.gitbook.io/cloud-and-devops/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://asafahmadov.gitbook.io/cloud-and-devops/devops-bootcamp/introduction-to-devops/what-is-this-ci-cd.md).

# What is this CI/CD?

    ▪ Continuous integration (CI) is the practice of merging all developers' working copies to a shared mainline 

    ▪ Continuous delivery (CD) is a software engineering approach in which teams produce software in short cycles, ensuring that the software can be reliably released at any time and, when releasing the software, without doing so manually 

    ▪ Put simply, it is a extremely frequent building and testing of software patches as part of the process of integrating them into a shared tree

### Why is this useful for open source projects? 

    ▪ Maintainers of projects can get dozens (possibly hundreds) of patches daily. Identifying and removing faulty ones prior to releasing them to the public can avoid development issues with the wider developer community. 

    ▪ This process enables patches to be built and tested prior to integration, finding bugs BEFORE they break other developers of the shared code.