Lesson 5 / 21

Typical Pipeline Stages

Build, test, and deploy — the three stages most pipelines share.

Build

The build stage compiles or bundles the code and installs dependencies, producing a concrete artifact (a binary, a Docker image, a JS bundle) that later stages will test and deploy.

Test

The test stage runs automated checks — unit tests, integration tests, linting — against the build. If anything fails, the pipeline stops here and the change never reaches deploy.

Deploy

The deploy stage ships the tested artifact to an environment — staging first, then production, either automatically (Continuous Deployment) or behind a manual approval (Continuous Delivery).

Order matters

Always build once and reuse the same artifact through test and deploy — never rebuild at each stage. Rebuilding risks testing one thing and shipping a subtly different one.