--- title: CI/CD CRASH COURSE For Beginners | Jenkins, GitHub... description: A beginner-friendly overview of CI/CD concepts and workflows covering the difference between Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/ci-cd-crash-course-for-beginners-jenkins-github-actions-gitlab-akke0ofmw twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: CI/CD CRASH COURSE For Beginners | Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab | daily.dev og:description: A beginner-friendly overview of CI/CD concepts and workflows covering the difference between Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/ci-cd-crash-course-for-beginners-jenkins-github-actions-gitlab-akke0ofmw og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/AKKe0OfMW.png og:image:alt: CI/CD CRASH COURSE For Beginners | Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # CI/CD CRASH COURSE For Beginners | Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab **[YouTube](https://daily.dev/sources/youtube)** · 9 min read · 8 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A beginner-friendly overview of CI/CD concepts and workflows covering the difference between Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Deployment. Walks through a typical pipeline step by step including code checkout, dependency installation, linting, testing, container image building, security scanning, and deployment to multiple environments. Compares three major CI/CD tools: Jenkins (self-hosted, highly customizable, plugin-heavy), GitHub Actions (cloud-hosted runners, tightly integrated with GitHub, YAML-based), and GitLab CI (all-in-one DevOps platform). Also briefly touches on AI-assisted CI/CD platforms like Harness AI and introduces the concept of GitOps as a more secure deployment model. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is the difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment? Continuous delivery means code is built, tested, and packaged so it is ready to deploy, but still requires manual approval before going to production. Continuous deployment goes further by automatically deploying code to production once all checks pass, with no human approval step. Teams needing change windows and release controls tend to favor delivery, while highly automated, confident teams favor deployment. _Developers deciding between release strategies can follow ci/cd explainers like this on daily.dev._ ### What are the main differences between Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI? Jenkins is self-hosted, highly flexible with a huge plugin ecosystem, but requires significant maintenance of agents, plugins, and credentials. GitHub Actions is tightly integrated with GitHub, uses YAML workflows, offers hosted runners so teams avoid running their own CI server, and triggers on events like push or pull request. GitLab CI is built directly into GitLab, uses a single .gitlab-ci.yml file with stages and jobs, and appeals to teams wanting one integrated platform for source control, CI/CD, and container registry. _Teams choosing a ci/cd tool can track comparisons like this on daily.dev before committing._ ### What security scanning tools are commonly used in a CI/CD pipeline before pushing a container image to a registry? Teams commonly use security scanning tools such as Trivy, Snyk, Scribe, and GitHub Action Security to scan dependencies, scan the container image, and check for exposed secrets before the image is pushed to a container registry like Docker Hub, Amazon ECR, Google Artifact Registry, or Azure Container Registry. _Engineers hardening their pipeline's security scanning step can find related tooling coverage on daily.dev._ --- Tags: [#devops](https://daily.dev/tags/devops), [#cicd](https://daily.dev/tags/cicd), [#github-actions](https://daily.dev/tags/github-actions), [#gitlab](https://daily.dev/tags/gitlab), [#jenkins](https://daily.dev/tags/jenkins) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/ci-cd-crash-course-for-beginners-jenkins-github-actions-gitlab-akke0ofmw) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"CI/CD CRASH COURSE For Beginners | Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/ci-cd-crash-course-for-beginners-jenkins-github-actions-gitlab-akke0ofmw","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/ci-cd-crash-course-for-beginners-jenkins-github-actions-gitlab-akke0ofmw"},"datePublished":"2026-07-06T19:26:30.451Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T08:00:24.610Z","description":"A beginner-friendly overview of CI/CD concepts and workflows covering the difference between Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous...","image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ixNNyLcWXX8/sddefault.jpg","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ixNNyLcWXX8/sddefault.jpg","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"YouTube","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"YouTube","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--W5zMumpP--/f_auto/v1725350181/logos/youtube","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/youtube"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/ci-cd-crash-course-for-beginners-jenkins-github-actions-gitlab-akke0ofmw","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":8},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"devops,cicd,github-actions,gitlab,jenkins","timeRequired":"PT9M","video":{"@type":"VideoObject","name":"CI/CD CRASH COURSE For Beginners | Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab","description":"A beginner-friendly overview of CI/CD concepts and workflows covering the difference between Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous...","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ixNNyLcWXX8/sddefault.jpg","uploadDate":"2026-07-06T19:26:30.451Z","duration":"PT9M","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/AKKe0OfMW","embedUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/embed/ixNNyLcWXX8"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"YouTube","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/youtube"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"CI/CD CRASH COURSE For Beginners | Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/ci-cd-crash-course-for-beginners-jenkins-github-actions-gitlab-akke0ofmw#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What is the difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Continuous delivery means code is built, tested, and packaged so it is ready to deploy, but still requires manual approval before going to production. 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