Quickstart Guide

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Continuous integration is a practice that helps developers integrate their code into a main branch of a shared repository early and often. Every developer commits daily. Every commit triggers automated tests and builds. Bugs are identified and repaired in minutes.





01 Connect to your code

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Continuous integration is a practice that helps developers integrate their code into a main branch of a shared repository early and often. Every developer commits daily. Every commit triggers automated tests and builds. Bugs are identified and repaired in minutes.





1. Select a project
Create a repository called “hello-world” in GitHub or Bitbucket. Then in the left-hand menu, select Projects. Find the repository, and click Set Up Project. Don’t see your repository? Use the org selector in the top left corner to find the correct organization.
Select Projects
2. Select a config.yml
In the “Select your config.yml file” modal, select Fast, then click Set Up Project. Choose the Hello World sample configuration file.
Choose Config
3. CircleCI config editor
You’re now in the CircleCI config editor, pre-populated with a sample config.yml file. Click Commit and Run.

This will create a .circleci/config.yml file at the root of your repository on a new branch called “circle-ci-setup”.
Config Editor
4. Congratulations 🎉
You should soon have your first green pipeline. If you are happy with this configuration, merge it into your main branch or continue to make changes.
Green Pipeline Build

02 Dig into your first pipeline

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You should see your pipeline start to run automatically—and pass!


1. So, what just happened?
Click on the green Success button to see details about the workflow. The hello-world pipeline ran one job called say-hello within the workflow. Click into the job to see the steps that ran.
Green Success Button
2. View your results
Click the say-hello job to see the steps in this job:
  • Spin up environment
  • Preparing environment variables
  • Checkout code
  • Say hello
Steps in Pipeline Job
3. Collaborate with teammates
It is easy for teammates and collaborators to view and follow your projects. Teammates can make a free CircleCI account at any time to view your pipelines, even if they are not committing any code.
Add Team Members

03 What's next

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We recommend inviting your teammates to join you, for free. By collaborating, you can troubleshoot, get pull requests approved, and build and test faster. You can also:


1. Break your build
Try editing your config.yml file. On CircleCI, you can edit files directly and then commit them to your VCS.

On the Projects page, click the ••• buttons to view your configuration file. Make any change and save it. You should see a new pipeline run and likely fail. This is a primary benefit of CircleCI: identifying failures early.
Failed Job in Pipeline
2. Explore the workflows function
In your Dashboard, click into the say-hello-world workflow. Can you find the four steps that ran? Hint: step 1 is Spin up environment.

A workflow is a set of rules that defines a collection of jobs and their run order. Workflows support complex job orchestration using a simple set of configuration keys to help you quickly resolve failures.
Explore Your Workflow
3. SSH into your build
On a failed pipeline, you can SSH directly into your CircleCI jobs and automatically troubleshoot issues. This feature reruns your pipeline and often finds and fixes errors.
Rerun Job with SSH
That’s a wrap! We hope you’re up and running and more confident using CircleCI. To continue your progress, check out the resources below or ask for help.







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