DevOps Beginner

What is Pipeline as Code?

Defining CI/CD pipeline configurations as version-controlled code files rather than through UI-based pipeline builders.

Pipeline as Code stores build, test, and deployment pipeline definitions in the same repository as application code. Examples include Jenkinsfile (Jenkins), .github/workflows/*.yml (GitHub Actions), .gitlab-ci.yml (GitLab), and azure-pipelines.yml (Azure DevOps). Benefits include version history of pipeline changes, code review for pipeline modifications, branch-specific pipeline variations, and reproducibility. Pipelines typically define stages (build, test, deploy), steps within stages, environment variables, triggers (push, PR, schedule), and conditions. Treating pipelines as code enables the same engineering practices (review, testing, rollback) applied to application development.

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Related Terms

Service Discovery

A mechanism that automatically detects and tracks the network locations of service instances in distributed systems.

A technique that allows enabling or disabling features in production without deploying new code, enabling safe rollouts and A/B testing.

SRE (Site Reliability Engineering)

An engineering discipline that applies software engineering principles to infrastructure and operations to create reliable systems.

A branching model for Git that defines a strict workflow with feature, develop, release, hotfix, and main branches.

The acceptable amount of unreliability allowed for a service, calculated as 100% minus the Service Level Objective.

Continuous Deployment

A practice where every code change that passes automated tests is automatically deployed to production.

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