CI/CD Pipeline Generator

GitHub Actions is the default choice for projects hosted on GitHub — it's fully integrated, free for public repos, and has thousands of community actions. GitLab CI is best if you're using GitLab or need self-hosted runners with more control. CircleCI offers fast parallelism and caching, useful for large test suites. For most teams on GitHub, GitHub Actions is the simplest path.

CI (Continuous Integration) automatically runs tests and builds every time code is pushed or a PR is opened — catching bugs early. CD (Continuous Deployment/Delivery) automatically deploys passing builds to staging or production. Together they create a pipeline: push code → tests run → build → deploy. This generator creates both stages.

Job dependencies ensure stages run in order. 'needs: test' means the build job only starts after the test job succeeds. This prevents deploying broken builds. In GitLab CI, 'needs' also enables parallel execution — a job can start as soon as its dependencies pass, without waiting for the entire previous stage to complete.

Never hardcode secrets in pipeline config. In GitHub Actions, add secrets via Settings → Secrets and reference them as ${{ secrets.MY_SECRET }}. In GitLab CI, use Settings → CI/CD → Variables. In CircleCI, use Project Settings → Environment Variables. All three encrypt secrets at rest and mask them in logs.

Environments (production, staging) add governance to deployments. GitHub Actions environments can require manual approval, restrict which branches can deploy, and track deployment history. This prevents accidental production deploys and gives you an audit trail. Always gate production deploys behind an environment with protection rules.

Cache package manager dependencies (node_modules, pip, go mod) between runs. GitHub Actions caches via actions/cache keyed on your lockfile hash — when the lockfile changes, the cache is invalidated. GitLab CI uses 'cache.key' similarly. Docker layer caching (docker_layer_caching in CircleCI, gha cache type in GitHub Actions) dramatically speeds up image builds.