Build pipelines

The past 2 years or more has seen a proliferation of continuous integration tools and platforms leading to substantial innovation in the build and release space. Distribution of builds is one such innovation and yet another is the way in which builds are now structured to make greater use of automation in various stages of the build. Build pipelines help to provide greater insight into the quality of each build and the environments to which they have been deployed. A natural expansion of the build pipeline meme is the adoption of continuous deployment techniques, where the intention is to extend the build pipeline into the production environment. This relies on automated deployment techniques and authorization mechanisms built into the continuous integration toolset. One of the key benefits is the ability to move new functionality into production rapidly and reliably.