Continuous Integration and Testing Flashcards

In CI, what does a 'broken build' notification ideally trigger first?

Answer: Developer who broke the build fixes it before committing more code

The developer responsible for the failing commit should stop other work and fix the build immediately to unblock the team.

Which metric best indicates the health of a CI pipeline over time?

Answer: Mean time to restore a broken build

Mean time to restore (MTTR) reflects how quickly the team responds to and resolves build failures.

What is 'test flakiness' in the context of CI?

Answer: Tests that randomly pass or fail without code changes

Flaky tests produce inconsistent results, eroding trust in the CI pipeline and hiding real failures.

A team notices their CI build takes 45 minutes. What is the recommended Agile approach?

Answer: Parallelize tests and optimize the pipeline to keep builds under 10 minutes

Fast feedback is essential to CI; pipelines exceeding ~10 minutes discourage frequent commits and slow the feedback loop.

What is the purpose of a 'staging' environment in a CI/CD pipeline?

Answer: To provide a production-like environment for final validation before release

Staging mirrors production to catch integration, configuration, and environment-specific issues before deployment.

Which practice helps prevent merge conflicts from accumulating in a CI workflow?

Answer: Integrating code to the mainline at least once per day

Frequent integration to the mainline minimizes divergence and reduces the size and complexity of merge conflicts.

In CI, what is the role of a 'build script'?

Answer: An automated script that compiles, tests, and packages the application consistently

A build script automates the entire build process so it runs identically on any machine, removing 'works on my machine' problems.