Toolkit setup#

CI/CD#

What is CI/CD ?

  • CI: Continuous Integration

  • CD: Continuous Delivery / Deployment

It’s a way to automate the process of building, testing, and releasing software

Continuous Integration (CI): Every time a developer pushes code or opens a pull request (PR),the system automatically:

  • Builds the project

  • Run tests

  • Checks code quality

Why does it matter? Problems are caught immediately and the code base stays stable.

Continuous Deployment (CD): After CI passes, CD takes over and packages the software and release it.

CI/CD

Where automation lives: GitHub Actions and the importance of the .yml file#

A very common tool for CI/CD is GitHub Actions.

GitHub Actions lets you define workflows that run automatically when something happens in your repository (for example on a code push or when publishing a package)

The core piece that defines how to run GitHub Actions is the .yml file. The .yml file it’s a configuration file that tells GitHub which steps to run and the sequence they need to be run. It’s the core of the project CI/CD pipeline pipeline. Usually it’s found in: .github /workflows/ci ci-cd.yml.

Why .yml and GitHub Actions are important? They make the process repeatable, automated, standardized and collaborative.

yml_github

File content#

What is it? A recipe that tells GitHub Actions exactly how to run your CI/CD pipeline.

It answers 4 key questions:

  • When to run? on : Triggers (when it

  • What to run? jobs: The main building blocks

  • Where to run? runs -on: Execution environment

  • How to run it? steps: The actual work

.yml file simple structure:

name: CI Pipeline

on: [push, pull_request]   #**when?** Push, pull_request , schedule, manual trigger

jobs:                      #**what?** One workflow, can run in parallel or sequentially
  test:
  runs-on: ubuntu-latest   #**where?** Ubuntu/ Windows or GitHub hosted machines
  steps:                   #**how?** Steps run commands (run) and use pre-built actions (uses)
    -run: pytest

Runners#

In GitHub Actions, a runner is the machine that executes your workflow steps. In a .yml, runs-on: ubuntu-latest/windows-latest means “use a runner with Ubuntu/Windows installed” or runs-on: self-hosted means “use a runner that I setup myself”.

In a .yml file, runs-on tells the system what kind of machine (runner) should execute the job.

ubuntu-latest or windows-latest are a virtual machines (VM) provided by GitHub where everything is pre-configured and ready to go.

Self-hosted means you are using your own machine (or server) that you set it up by yourself as a runner. GitHub sends jobs to this machine instead of theirs.

From code to users: Packaging and executable deployment#

  • CI/CD: Automates building , testing , and delivering the code. Triggers everything on push or tag.

  • Packaging: Prepares the code to be reused. It creates installable artifacts (libraries and wheels)

  • Tags and releases:

    • Tag: Version maker (for example v1.0.0)

    • Release: Official distributed version. Often triggers CI/CD to publish artifacts.

  • Executable deployment: makes the code runnable without Python. Produces an .exe.

Packaging and executable deployment