Continuous integration means that whenever a new version is pushed to the source code repository, the continuous integration server kicks in, pulls the code to its disk, and starts the build. It compiles the code first, runs the unit tests, fires the static code-analysis tools, and if all goes right, packages a snapshot release and deploys it on a development server.
CI servers have web interfaces that can be used to create a release. In such a case, the deployment can even go to the test servers or to production depending on local business needs and on the policy that was created accordingly.
Automating the build and deployment process has the same advantages as any other automation—repeated tasks can ...
