CI/CD Tutorial
Automate build, test and deployment: pipelines, GitHub Actions, release strategies and pipeline security
Beginner to Intermediate4 lessonsabout 22 min of reading
This CI/CD course is for developers who push code to a repository and want to understand what should happen automatically next. You should be comfortable with Git branches and pull requests (see the Git and GitHub course if not) and have a project with at least a few tests. Familiarity with containers helps for the later lessons, and the Docker course covers it.
You will learn why teams build pipelines, what belongs in each stage, how to write a working GitHub Actions workflow and read it line by line, how rolling, blue-green and canary releases differ, how feature flags separate deploying from releasing, and how to roll back safely. The final lesson covers the part many tutorials skip: keeping secrets out of logs, defending the pipeline itself, and stopping it from becoming slow and flaky.
The lessons are ordered from idea to practice to risk. First the purpose of continuous integration, then a concrete pipeline you can copy and adapt, then the choices about how code reaches users, and finally the security and reliability habits that keep the whole thing trustworthy.
CI/CD lessons
- 1Continuous Integration Explained: What a CI/CD Pipeline Is ForUnderstand continuous integration, continuous delivery and deployment, and why a CI/CD pipeline exists, with a runnable local check script example.5 min read
- 2CI/CD Build, Test and Artifact Stages with GitHub ActionsBuild a real GitHub Actions workflow with lint, test, build and artifact upload stages, and learn what every line of the YAML does.5 min read
- 3Deployment Strategies: Rolling, Blue-Green, Canary and RollbacksCompare rolling, blue-green and canary deployments, use feature flags to separate deploy from release, and plan fast rollbacks, including database changes.6 min read
- 4CI/CD Secrets, Pipeline Security and Making Pipelines Fast and ReliableProtect CI/CD secrets, defend against workflow injection and risky actions, use OIDC instead of long-lived keys, and keep pipelines fast and reliable.6 min read
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