CI/CD & Deployment interview question · Most asked
What's the difference between continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment?
Summary
Continuous integration merges small changes frequently and verifies each with automated builds and tests. Continuous delivery keeps the main branch always releasable, with deployment to production a one-click decision. Continuous deployment goes further: every change that passes the pipeline deploys to production automatically.
Longer Answer
All three depend on fast, reliable automated tests and small batch sizes. Continuous deployment typically adds progressive rollout and automatic rollback.
Key Points
- CI: integrate and test frequently
- Delivery: always releasable
- Deployment: automatic release
- Small batches, reliable tests
More most-asked CI/CD & Deployment questions
- What stages does a typical CI/CD pipeline contain?
- Compare rolling, blue-green and canary deployments.
- How do you run database migrations without downtime?
- What are best practices for writing Dockerfiles?
- What's the difference between liveness and readiness probes?
- How should secrets be handled in CI/CD pipelines?