Crash Course: Continuous Deployment with Semaphore CI

Software is increasingly vital for business competitiveness across various sectors. Many large organizations find their current software management methods hinder their agility. Continuous delivery (CD) offers a solution.

While understanding continuous delivery is widespread, successful implementation remains a hurdle. This article addresses that challenge.

Key Points:

• Continuous delivery accelerates responses to business needs. Implementation can be complex, but tools like Semaphore CI automate the process.
• Semaphore CI is a CI/CD tool supporting numerous languages and frameworks, integrating with GitHub, Bitbucket, and others. It offers real-time feedback, parallel/sequential task execution, and automated deployment.
• Setting up CD with Semaphore involves linking your version control system, configuring build settings and the deployment pipeline, and defining test and deployment commands. Multiple deployment pipelines for different environments are possible.
• Semaphore CI excels in simplicity and speed. However, it's a paid service. GitLab offers a free, open-source alternative.

Getting Started: Beyond Manual Deployments

Manually uploading files via tools like FileZilla is inefficient and doesn't support automation. While git pull on the server is quicker, it doesn't meet the continuous delivery demands of modern software development, requiring bug-free, frequent releases.

This tutorial demonstrates deploying a Laravel application on a DigitalOcean server using Semaphore CI's continuous delivery pipeline. The application's source code is on GitHub.

Setting Up a Semaphore Project:

1. Create a Semaphore account.
2. Create a new project, selecting the repository (Bitbucket or GitHub).
3. Choose the repository branch (e.g., master).
4. Semaphore analyzes the project, identifying relevant metadata (e.g., PHP version).

Configuring Builds:

Adjust the settings to match your project. Thorough review prevents build errors.

The First Build and Troubleshooting:

Initial builds might fail (e.g., due to missing configuration files). Address these issues (e.g., creating a .env file). Rebuild from the Semaphore UI or push changes to the branch.

Parallelizing Builds:

For larger projects, parallelizing tests significantly reduces build times. Divide tests into logical groups (e.g., by functional area) and configure parallel jobs in Semaphore.

Continuous Deployment:

Configure automatic deployment to your server (e.g., DigitalOcean). Use custom deployment commands, providing SSH keys for secure access.

Open-Source Alternatives:

GitLab provides a free open-source alternative, but requires manual setup and may have performance limitations.

Conclusion:

This guide demonstrates setting up a continuous delivery pipeline for a PHP application using Semaphore CI. Automated builds and deployments streamline the software release process. Future articles will explore advanced topics like asset building and zero-downtime deployments.

(The Frequently Asked Questions section has been omitted for brevity, as it largely repeats information already presented in the main article.)

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