Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment, also known as Continuous Delivery or CI/CD, is a software development technique that aims to automate the steps involved in integrating code changes into a shared source code repository, testing those changes, and automatically deploying those changes to target environments without the need for human intervention.
It makes early error detection easier and minimises the amount of code that needs to be debugged by a developer to identify the fault’s source.
It also forms the basis of contemporary DevOps operations, facilitating more fluid and agile collaboration between development and operations teams.
Several well-known CI/CD solutions include AWS CodeDeploy, GitHub CI, GitLab, TeamCity, Bamboo and Jenkins.
GitHub CI/CD
GitHub Actions is a powerful CI/CD tool provided by GitHub that gives developers the ability to automate their processes to build, test, and release software. It provides customizable CI/CD starter workflows that are suited for different languages and frameworks, enabling quick setup for for deployment, testing, and package installation tasks.
Before
Before Rails 7.2, we had to manually integrate GitHub CI workflow to our project.
Integrating GitHub CI/CD with a Rails application is relatively straightforward. Here’s a step-by-step guide to get started:
-
Make a folder named
.github/workflowsin our Rails project’s root directory. -
Inside this folder, create a YAML file (for example, ci.yml) to outline our CI/CD workflow.
-
Define the tasks we want to automate, like running tests, building app, and deploying to staging or production.
-
Specify triggers for when the workflow should kick off, such as whenever code is pushed to a particular branch or when a pull request is initiated.
Here’s a basic example of a GitHub CI/CD workflow for a Rails application:
name: CI Test Suite
on:
push:
branches: [develop, main]
pull_request:
types: [labeled, opened, synchronize, reopened]
workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
tests:
name: Running tests
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout code
uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: Setup PostgreSQL
uses: Harmon758/[email protected]
with:
postgresql version: 14.9-alpine3.18
postgresql db: test
postgresql user: root
postgresql password: "password"
- name: Setup Ruby
uses: ruby/setup-ruby@v1
with:
ruby-version: 3.0.0
- name: Install gems
run: |
bundle config path vendor/bundle
bundle install --jobs 4 --retry 3
- name: Run Rubocop
run: |
bundle exec rubocop
- name: Run tests
run:
bundle exec rspec --exclude-pattern "spec/system/**/*_spec.rb"After
Rails 7.2 now includes Brakeman and RuboCop, and it also ships with a default GitHub CI workflow.
On executing rails new <app_name>, we will notice two new files with default configurations, making it easier for newcomers to have good start with automated scanning, linting, testing
and contributing effectively right from the start.
.github/workflows/ci.yml
.github/dependabot.ymlIf we don’t want GitHub CI workflow in our Rails application, we can skip it by passing --skip-ci flag while creating the app.
Here is the default .github/workflows/ci.yml
name: CI
on:
pull_request:
push:
branches: [ main ]
jobs:
scan_ruby:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout code
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Set up Ruby
uses: ruby/setup-ruby@v1
with:
ruby-version: .ruby-version
bundler-cache: true
- name: Scan for security vulnerabilities in Ruby dependencies
run: bin/brakeman --no-pager
scan_js:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout code
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Set up Ruby
uses: ruby/setup-ruby@v1
with:
ruby-version: .ruby-version
bundler-cache: true
- name: Scan for security vulnerabilities in JavaScript dependencies
run: bin/importmap audit
lint:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout code
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Set up Ruby
uses: ruby/setup-ruby@v1
with:
ruby-version: .ruby-version
bundler-cache: true
- name: Lint code for consistent style
run: bin/rubocop -f github
test:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
# services:
# redis:
# image: redis
# ports:
# - 6379:6379
# options: --health-cmd "redis-cli ping" --health-interval 10s --health-timeout 5s --health-retries 5
steps:
- name: Install packages
run: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y google-chrome-stable curl libjemalloc2 libsqlite3-0 libvips
- name: Checkout code
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Set up Ruby
uses: ruby/setup-ruby@v1
with:
ruby-version: .ruby-version
bundler-cache: true
- name: Run tests
env:
RAILS_ENV: test
# REDIS_URL: redis://localhost:6379/0
run: bin/rails db:setup test test:system
- name: Keep screenshots from failed system tests
uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
if: failure()
with:
name: screenshots
path: $/tmp/screenshots
if-no-files-found: ignoreConclusion
By automating the testing and deployment processes, we can ensure our application is always in a reliable state and ready for release.
GitHub Actions flexibility and integration with our existing repositories make it an ideal choice for streamlining our development workflow.
