To improve the efficiency of your software development workflow, you should use continuous integration. We’ll explain what continuous integration is, why it’s important and how it can help you.

Continuous Integration in DevOps

Continuous integration is the automation of building and testing code each time a change is made in the codebase, and then committing the code back to your central code repository. For each new code commit that is made, an automated build and test process — which is also called a “pipeline”— is triggered. This trigger then generates a report on any defects found during code compilation and/or testing.

The Benefits of Continuous Integration

The benefits of using continuous integration include the following:

• Easier to fix software vulnerabilities, errors and bugs.
• Minimizing the amount of potential risk to your software development project.
• Increasing the quality of your software.
• Increasing the productivity of your team members.

While the above list is not comprehensive, it does represent the most common benefits for software development teams.

The Difference Between Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery

While both continuous integration and continuous delivery are software development processes, there is quite a bit of differences between them. To put it simply, continuous integration is used during the build and test phase, while continuous delivery is used once changes have been committed. Essentially, the aim of continuous delivery is to always have validated and verified code in your code repository, also known as a version control system.

Why Continuous Integration Is Important

Continuous integration is important because it enables you and your team to avoid common development pitfalls. In addition, a continuous integration pipeline ensures that every change is integrated, tested and verified.

How Static Code Analysis Complements Continuous Integration

One of the most effective practices you can adopt to improve your continuous integration development process is to use a static code analysis tool. The tool provides you with fast, reliable feedback on submitted code changes — enabling you to identify vulnerabilities and errors earlier in your development process. In addition, you are able to use quality gates with  static analysis tool to prevent those issues from entering your main code stream.

To read more, please visit: https://www.perforce.com/blog/kw/what-is-continuous-integration