CI/CD Pipelines

Deployment process automation is fundamental for maintaining an efficient and reliable development flow. Most of my projects use GitHub Actions as their CI/CD platform, allowing me to automate every phase from commit to production release.

GitHub Actions: The Heart of Automation

GitHub Actions has become my primary tool for continuous integration and deployment. Its native integration with GitHub repositories eliminates the need to configure external services, while the workflow system's flexibility allows managing even very complex scenarios.

I have configured pipelines that manage the entire application lifecycle: running automated tests on every push, static code analysis, production-optimized builds, and automatic deployment to different environments based on branches or tags.

Cloud Service Deployment

A significant portion of my projects is deployed to third-party cloud services through GitHub Actions. For frontend applications developed with Astro.js, the workflow handles building the project and publishing it to Cloudflare Workers using Wrangler, Cloudflare's official CLI. The process is completely automated: every push to the main branch triggers the build and production deployment.

For simpler projects or static documentation, I use GitHub Pages as a hosting platform. Here too, GitHub Actions manages static content generation and publication, making the update process immediate and free of manual intervention.

Private Server Deployment

Not all projects can or should run on cloud platforms. For applications requiring greater control or handling sensitive data, I have configured pipelines that deploy directly to my private servers. These workflows use secure SSH connections to transfer code, run database migrations, invalidate caches, and restart necessary services.

The main challenge in private server deployment is ensuring credential security. I use GitHub Secrets to store SSH keys, access tokens, and other sensitive information, ensuring they are never exposed in logs or code.

Deployment Strategies

Depending on the project and context, I implement different deployment strategies. For critical applications I use blue-green or canary release approaches, which minimize downtime and enable rapid rollback if problems occur. For less critical projects, direct deployment with post-deploy health checks is often sufficient.

Every pipeline includes post-deployment verification steps: health checks, automated smoke tests, and notifications for any failures. This ensures problems are identified immediately, allowing timely intervention.

Automated Testing

CI/CD pipelines are not limited to deployment: they also integrate automatic test execution. Unit tests, integration tests, and where appropriate, end-to-end tests run on every push, serving as a gate for deployment. If tests fail, deployment is automatically blocked, preventing release of non-functional code.

Monitoring and Notifications

Every pipeline is configured to send notifications about execution status. I use integrations with Slack and email to receive immediate alerts on failures, allowing me to intervene quickly. Detailed logs from every execution remain available on GitHub for debugging and post-mortem analysis.

Investment in CI/CD automation pays off enormously over time: it reduces human errors, accelerates time-to-market, and frees valuable time that can be dedicated to developing new features instead of repetitive deployment operations.