Understanding the codesphere CI Pipeline

Last updated: June 13, 2025

The Codesphere CI (Continuous Integration) Pipeline is the automated workflow that takes your code from development to a live, running application. It provides a standardized, reliable, and repeatable process for deploying your projects, ensuring that all necessary setup, testing, and execution steps are performed correctly every time.

The pipeline is visualized in the "Stages" panel in your IDE and is broken down into three sequential stages: Prepare, Test, and Run.

1. The "Prepare" stage

This is the foundational setup phase of your deployment. The purpose of the "Prepare" stage is to install all the dependencies, packages, and tools that your application needs to function correctly. This stage ensures that the environment is perfectly configured before your application code is ever executed.

Common steps in this stage include:

  • Installing language-specific packages (e.g., npm install, pip install).

  • Downloading necessary binaries or assets.

  • Setting up required tools.

2. The "Test" stage (Optional)

This stage is dedicated to quality assurance. It runs any automated tests you have configured to verify the integrity and correctness of your code. By running tests before deployment, you can catch bugs early and prevent broken code from going live.

If you do not have any tests configured for your project, this stage can be left empty and will be skipped.

Common steps in this stage include:

  • Running unit tests or integration suites (e.g., npm test, pytest).

  • Performing code linting or static analysis.

3. The "Run" stage

This is the final and most important stage. The "Run" stage takes your fully prepared and tested code and starts the application, making it accessible online. The commands in this stage are typically the long-running processes that serve your application to users.

Common steps in this stage include:

  • Starting a web server (e.g., npm start).

  • Running a service.

How to use the pipeline

The steps for each stage are defined in your project's ci.yml configuration file. To deploy your application, you execute each stage in sequence by clicking the "Run" button within that stage's view. You can monitor the real-time logs and output from every command in the "CI Pipeline" tab located in the bottom panel of the IDE.