Frontastic explains: Continuous releasing
In the fast-changing digital world, it’s hard to keep up with upcoming technologies, techniques, and software solutions. We don’t want marketers, agencies, or developers to lose track and want to provide the knowledge of our highly experienced team to everyone interested.
Today we talk about the topic: Continuous releasing.
What’s continuous releasing?
To make updates to a website, new versions of the code need to be released. But before new versions of the code can be released, they need to be tested to make sure they don’t interfere with or break existing code, show weird behavior, or accidentally take down your entire website. There are different ways that companies can choose to do this.
Continuous Integration
Firstly, there’s Continuous Integration. This is when developers constantly make single changes to their code which are automatically tested to make preparing for release easier. You can easily see where the code won’t integrate correctly, but it won’t go live to customers. It’s just an initial test that the new code will work.
Continuous Delivery
An extension of Continuous Integration is Continuous Delivery. This is where all the changes that have been made by all the Developers are grouped together and are automatically tested for the whole system. This method ensures it’s safe to release all the code, but someone has to trigger the release to the website manually.
Continuous Deployment
Then there’s Continuous Deployment. It’s basically the same as Continuous Delivery, except the release is done automatically. It minimizes the time between writing a new line of code and this new code then being used by live users.
Testing is the key to success
This doesn’t mean that’s it’s all automatic. There’s always some kind of developer intervention or investigation if the code doesn’t pass the tests. And some tests can’t be automated, like checking that everything looks as expected on a website, checking if a button is in the right place on the page and that the click works.
So there are different ways to test and release code, but you should always check your site to make sure it looks right.
Do you want to learn more?
Catherine Jones
Catherine’s the Lead Editor at Frontastic. She’s worked in many different positions at different levels but always with a customer focus and is always looking to create the best experience for users.