Audience: developers who can make a CI job run, but have not yet built the habits and system that make integration safe, routine, and boring.
Continuous Integration (CI) is not a YAML file, a hosted service, a pull-request check, or a green badge. It is a development practice: everyone frequently merges small, verified changes into a shared code line, and an automated build tells the team quickly whether the integrated product still works.
This guide is deliberately grounded in Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk by Paul M. Duvall, Steve Matyas, and Andrew Glover (Addison-Wesley, 2007). The book frames CI as a way to turn integration from a late, risky event into an everyday activity, covering automated build, testing, inspection, deployment, and feedback. Publisher overview
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