Release Engineering & CI/CD Flashcards

What is the primary purpose of a feature flag in a CI/CD pipeline?

Answer: To enable or disable features at runtime without redeploying

Feature flags allow teams to toggle functionality at runtime, decoupling deployment from release.

Which deployment strategy sends a small percentage of production traffic to a new version while the rest uses the old version?

Answer: Canary deployment

Canary deployments route a small slice of traffic to the new version to validate it before full rollout.

In a CI pipeline, what does a 'lint' stage primarily check?

Answer: Code style, formatting, and static analysis issues

Linting analyzes source code for stylistic and potential programming errors without executing it.

What is the key difference between Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment?

Answer: Continuous Delivery requires manual approval before production; Continuous Deployment deploys automatically

Continuous Delivery stops at a ready-to-deploy state requiring human approval, whereas Continuous Deployment automates the entire path to production.

Which artifact repository type is best suited for storing Docker images in a CI/CD workflow?

Answer: Container registry (e.g., ECR, GCR)

Container registries like AWS ECR or Google GCR are specifically designed to store and distribute Docker/OCI images.

What does 'pipeline as code' mean in modern CI/CD practices?

Answer: Defining pipeline configuration in version-controlled files alongside application code

Pipeline as code means storing pipeline definitions (e.g., Jenkinsfile, .gitlab-ci.yml) in version control for auditability and reproducibility.

An SRE wants to prevent a bad release from reaching all users by gradually increasing traffic. Which pattern achieves this?

Answer: Progressive delivery

Progressive delivery incrementally shifts traffic to new versions, allowing validation and rollback at each step.