This chapter covers
- Continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD)
- Reasons to adopt CI and CD
- The role of tests in building a CI/CD pipeline
- Version-control checks
- The advantages of adopting version-control checks
Louis always tells his staff not to bake different parts of a recipe without talking to each other. Pastry chefs who make an éclair’s choux pastry are frequently talking to others making its pastry cream and to those making its chocolate glazing.
When pastry chefs don’t talk to each other, they try to be more efficient by making all the pastry cream they possibly can or baking the bare minimum they need. The problem with this lack of communication is that often, they’ll waste ingredients by making either too much cream or too little. If they make too much, the surplus gets thrown away because Louis doesn’t sell anything that isn’t fresh. If they make too little, it’s the choux pastry that gets thrown out, because there’s not enough cream to fill every éclair.
On the other hand, when his staff works together, they agree on how many éclairs they’ll bake and what should be their glazing’s flavor. They bake one batch at a time and continuously put together each one’s work to make fresh éclairs.
Combining their work early and frequently reduces waste because it guarantees that the pastry’s flavor goes well with the cream and that the glazing has the ideal level of sweetness to complement the rest.