CI/CD Pipeline Automation: From Code Commit to Production in Minutes
Practical guide to implementing automated CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, Docker, and cloud deployments for ASP.NET Core applications.
Your Name
The difference between a good development team and a great one often comes down to deployment speed and reliability. Before automating my CI/CD pipelines, deployments were manual, error-prone affairs that took hours. Today, I merge code and watch it automatically build, test, and deploy to production in under five minutes.
Understanding CI/CD in Practice
Continuous Integration (CI) means automatically testing every code change. Continuous Deployment (CD) means automatically releasing tested code to production. Together, they eliminate manual deployment friction and catch errors early.
The Real Benefits I've Experienced
Faster feedback: Code issues are caught in minutes rather than days after deployment.
Reduced manual errors: No more "forgot to update a config" mistakes.
Increased confidence: Multiple checks before production ensure releases are trustworthy.
Phase 1: Building Your First CI/CD Pipeline
I'll walk through implementing a complete pipeline using GitHub Actions, which provides excellent integration with .NET tooling.
The Foundation: Unit Tests CI
The first workflow runs on every commit to validate code quality:
name: CI - Unit Tests
on:
push:
branches: [ main, develop ]
pull_request:
branches: [ main, develop ]
jobs:
build-and-test:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Setup .NET
uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v4
with:
dotnet-version: '8.0.x'
- name: Restore dependencies
run: dotnet restore
- name: Build
run: dotnet build --configuration Release --no-restore
- name: Run Unit Tests
run: dotnet test --configuration Release --no-build
Building and Pushing Docker Images
Once tests pass, automatically build and push Docker images:
name: Build and Push Docker Image
on:
push:
branches: [ main, develop ]
env:
REGISTRY: myregistry.azurecr.io
IMAGE_NAME: myapi
jobs:
build-and-push:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout code
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Set up Docker Buildx
uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v2
- name: Login to Container Registry
uses: docker/login-action@v2
with:
registry: ${{ env.REGISTRY }}
username: ${{ secrets.REGISTRY_USERNAME }}
password: ${{ secrets.REGISTRY_PASSWORD }}
- name: Build and push Docker image
uses: docker/build-push-action@v4
with:
context: .
push: true
tags: ${{ env.REGISTRY }}/${{ env.IMAGE_NAME }}:${{ github.sha }}
Conclusion
Automating CI/CD transforms how teams work. Instead of deployments being stressful events, they become routine, reliable, and frequent.
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