Okuzeka
Software Engineering vocabulary · Release and Maintenance

Pipeline

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈpaɪplaɪn/nounCore term

In software engineering, pipeline means: An automated series of steps, such as building, testing and deploying, that runs every time code changes and stops if one step fails.

In Turkish: pipeline, işlem hattı, CI/CD hattı

How it is used

Engineers talk about pipelines all day: they run, pass, fail, turn green or red, and get stuck. A pipeline is made of stages and jobs. Common tools are GitHub Actions, GitLab CI and Jenkins.

Example sentences

  1. The pipeline failed at the test stage, so nothing was deployed.

  2. Can you re-run the pipeline? I think that error was just a network timeout.

Common collocations

  • CI/CD pipeline
  • run the pipeline
  • the pipeline failed
  • pipeline stage
  • deployment pipeline
  • CI/CDShort for continuous integration and continuous delivery (or deployment): automatically building and testing every change, then releasing it quickly and safely.
  • buildThe process of turning source code into a program or package that can run, or the result of that process. Also a verb: to build the project.
  • continuous integrationThe practice of merging small code changes into the shared main branch often, with each change automatically built and tested so problems are found early.
  • artifactA file or package produced by a build, such as a JAR file, a binary or a container image, which is stored and later deployed.
  • 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.

This word in other fields

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

More terms: Release and Maintenance

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: