In a continuous delivery environment web application updates are pushed out fast and frequently. Implementing that environment requires many different pieces: version control, automated testing, and automated deployment. It’s a lot to wrap your head around, but there are tangible benefits for small schools, including new opportunities to collaborate among institutions or with student developers.
In this presentation we will demonstrate how to build a lightweight continuous integration and delivery stack using free and open source tools: GitLab for version control, GitLab CI and Docker for testing, and Docker and Capistrano for deployment. We will walk through how each piece is separately important and how combining them creates a simple yet powerful deployment strategy. We will also describe concrete examples of how we are using these tools to share application development with students and each other.