Overview

The path from a commit to a running service. Push to a branch, the pipeline builds, tests, and ships - without anyone SSHing into a server to do it.

What it covers

Build - one command that produces a versioned artifact, the same way on a laptop and in CI.
Test - lint, unit tests, and a smoke test against the built image before anything is allowed to move forward.
Deploy - Ansible-driven rollout to staging, then production, gated on the pipeline going green.
Feedback - the pipeline reports back to the pull request, so review and status live in one place.

Typical shape

name: deploy

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: docker build -t app:${{ github.sha }} .
      - run: docker run --rm app:${{ github.sha }} npm test

  deploy:
    needs: build
    if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - run: ansible-playbook deploy.yml --inventory production

Notes

Deploys are a pull request away from being reverted - the previous release is one commit back, and the same pipeline path ships it.