Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) are essential practices in modern software development. They help ensure that your code is always in a deployable state, automate the testing and deployment processes, and improve the overall quality and reliability of your applications.

• Automated Testing: Automatically run tests on your codebase whenever changes are made.
• Code Integration: Frequently integrate code changes into a shared repository.
• Build Automation: Automatically build the application to ensure that new changes do not break the build.

• Automated Deployment: Automatically deploy the application to a staging or production environment after passing all tests.
• Environment Configuration: Manage different configurations for different environments (development, staging, production).
• Rollback Mechanism: Ability to revert to a previous stable version in case of deployment failures.

There are several CI/CD tools available that support Flutter, including:

• GitHub Actions
• Travis CI
• CircleCI
• Bitrise
• Codemagic

For this example, we will use GitHub Actions, a popular CI/CD tool that integrates seamlessly with GitHub repositories.

1. Create a .github/workflows Directory:

   • In your Flutter project root, create a directory named .github/workflows.

2. Create a Workflow File:

   • Inside the .github/workflows directory, create a file named flutter-ci.yml.

3. Define the Workflow:

   • Open flutter-ci.yml and add the following content:

• name: The name of the workflow.
• on: Specifies the events that trigger the workflow. In this case, it runs on pushes and pull requests to the main branch.
• jobs: Defines the jobs to be run. Each job runs on a specified runner (ubuntu-latest in this case).
• steps: The individual steps to be executed in the job:
  • Checkout repository: Uses the actions/checkout action to check out the repository.
  • Set up Flutter: Uses the subosito/flutter-action to set up Flutter on the runner.
  • Install dependencies: Runs flutter pub get to install the project dependencies.
  • Run tests: Runs flutter test to execute the test suite.

To add deployment steps, you can extend the workflow to include deployment to platforms like Firebase, AWS, or any other hosting service. Here’s an example of deploying to Firebase:

• Deploy to Firebase: Uses the w9jds/firebase-action to deploy the application to Firebase Hosting.
• if: Ensures that the deployment step only runs on the main branch and if all previous steps were successful.
• env: Uses a secret FIREBASE_TOKEN to authenticate with Firebase.

1. Create a GitHub repository for your Flutter project if you haven't already.
2. Create the .github/workflows directory in your project root.
3. Add the flutter-ci.yml file with the provided workflow content.
4. Push your changes to the main branch.
5. Observe the workflow execution in the Actions tab of your GitHub repository.
6. Add a deployment step to deploy your app to a hosting service of your choice.

Follow the steps outlined in the "Creating a GitHub Actions Workflow" and "Adding Deployment Steps" sections to set up your CI/CD pipeline.

In this section, you learned about the importance of Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment in modern software development. You set up a basic CI/CD pipeline for a Flutter project using GitHub Actions, including automated testing and deployment. By implementing CI/CD, you can ensure that your Flutter applications are always in a deployable state, improving the overall quality and reliability of your software.

Next, you will learn about maintaining and updating your Flutter app in the final module.