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Software Engineering vocabulary · Release and Maintenance

Environment

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ɪnˈvaɪrənmənt/nounCore term

In software engineering, environment means: A separate copy of the whole system, with its own servers, settings and data, used for one purpose such as development, testing or serving real users.

In Turkish: ortam

How it is used

Typical environments are dev, test, staging and production, often shortened to 'env'. Code moves from one environment to the next. 'Environment variables' are settings passed to an application from outside its code.

Example sentences

  1. The bug only happens in the test environment, so it's probably a configuration problem.

  2. Each developer can create a temporary environment for their branch.

Common collocations

  • test environment
  • production environment
  • environment variable
  • development environment
  • set up an environment
  • productionThe live environment where real users use the software, as opposed to development or test environments.
  • stagingAn environment set up to be as close as possible to production, where a team checks a release one last time before real users get it.
  • deployTo put a new version of software onto servers or devices so that it starts running there, for example in a test environment or for real users.
  • pipelineAn automated series of steps, such as building, testing and deploying, that runs every time code changes and stops if one step fails.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Release and Maintenance

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