Lesson 36 of 40 DevOps Expert ⏱ 35 min

CI/CD — GitHub Actions & Azure Pipelines

Automate testing, linting, and deployment of Python apps with GitHub Actions, matrix builds, secrets, and Azure Container Apps deployment.

Part 1: What You Will Learn

Understand continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery/deployment (CD).
Run linting and pytest automatically on every push or pull request.
Create a Python matrix build in GitHub Actions.
Recognise the equivalent stages in an Azure Pipelines YAML file.

Part 2: GitHub Actions Workflow

name: Python CI

on:
  push:
  pull_request:

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    strategy:
      matrix:
        python-version: ["3.12", "3.13"]

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Set up Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: ${{ matrix.python-version }}

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: |
          python -m pip install --upgrade pip
          pip install -r requirements.txt
          pip install pytest ruff

      - name: Lint
        run: ruff check .

      - name: Test
        run: pytest -q

Part 3: Azure Pipelines Equivalent

trigger:
- main

pool:
  vmImage: ubuntu-latest

steps:
- task: UsePythonVersion@0
  inputs:
    versionSpec: "3.13"

- script: |
    python -m pip install --upgrade pip
    pip install -r requirements.txt
    pip install pytest ruff
  displayName: Install dependencies

- script: ruff check .
  displayName: Lint

- script: pytest -q
  displayName: Run tests

Part 4: CI/CD Best Practices

Keep secrets in the CI platform's secret store, never directly in YAML.
Make the test stage pass before deployment begins.
Pin important dependencies and review automated dependency updates.
Produce deployable artifacts or container images once, then promote the same artifact between environments.
Protect the production environment with approvals when appropriate.

Part 5: Hands-On Practice

Mini project — Automated Python Quality Gate. Create a small Python package with two pytest tests. Push it to GitHub, add the workflow above under .github/workflows/python-ci.yml, deliberately introduce a failing test, and observe how the workflow blocks a clean CI result until the bug is fixed.

Part 6: Next Steps

Once the CI workflow is green, continue to Lesson 37 to build real-time applications with streaming and WebSockets.

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