The build pipeline

In the previous section, we listed the many necessary steps to make our code ready to be shipped to production. In the context of CI, a combination of these steps is what we call the build pipeline: it takes the input (in our case, all the application code), runs it through several tools, and creates so-called build artifacts out of it. They are the outcome of a build—usually, this includes the deliverable (a package of the application code that is ready to be moved to the desired environment), plus additional data, such as build logs, reports, and so on.

The following diagram gives you a schematic overview of what a typical build pipeline could look like. Since it is not executed in your local environment, it requires two additional steps: creating a build environment and building an application:

Figure 11.2: Schema of a CI pipeline

Other languages in the pipeline

In this book, we will only have a look at the PHP-related parts...