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Use Compatibility Matrix with CI/CD

This topic describes how to integrate Replicated Compatibility Matrix into your CI/CD workflows.

About Using Compatibility Matrix with CI/CD​

Replicated recommends that you integrate Compatibility Matrix into your existing CI/CD workflow to automate the process of creating clusters to install your application and run tests. For more information, including additional best practices and recommendations for CI/CD, see About Integrating with CI/CD.

Replicated GitHub Actions​

Replicated maintains a set of custom GitHub actions that are designed to replace repetitive tasks related to using Compatibility Matrix and distributing applications with Replicated.

If you use GitHub Actions as your CI/CD platform, you can include these custom actions in your workflows rather than using Replicated CLI commands. Integrating the Replicated GitHub actions into your CI/CD pipeline helps you quickly build workflows with the required inputs and outputs, without needing to manually create the required CLI commands for each step.

To view all the available GitHub actions that Replicated maintains, see the replicatedhq/replicated-actions repository in GitHub.

For more information, see Use Replicated GitHub Actions in CI/CD.

Replicated recommends that you maintain unique CI/CD workflows for development (continuous integration) and for releasing your software (continuous delivery). For example development and release workflows that integrate Compatibility Matrix for testing, see Recommended CI/CD Workflows.

Test Script Recommendations​

Incorporating code tests into your CI/CD workflows is important for ensuring that developers receive quick feedback and can make updates in small iterations. Replicated recommends that you create and run all of the following test types as part of your CI/CD workflows:

  • Application Testing: Traditional application testing includes unit, integration, and end-to-end tests. These tests are critical for application reliability, and Compatibility Matrix is designed to to incorporate and use your application testing.

  • Performance Testing: Performance testing is used to benchmark your application to ensure it can handle the expected load and scale gracefully. Test your application under a range of workloads and scenarios to identify any bottlenecks or performance issues. Make sure to optimize your application for different Kubernetes distributions and configurations by creating all of the environments you need to test in.

  • Smoke Testing: Using a single, conformant Kubernetes distribution to test basic functionality of your application with default (or standard) configuration values is a quick way to get feedback if something is likely to be broken for all or most customers. Replicated also recommends that you include each Kubernetes version that you intend to support in your smoke tests.

  • Compatibility Testing: Because applications run on various Kubernetes distributions and configurations, it is important to test compatibility across different environments. Compatibility Matrix provides this infrastructure.

  • Canary Testing: Before releasing to all customers, consider deploying your application to a small subset of your customer base as a canary release. This lets you monitor the application's performance and stability in real-world environments, while minimizing the impact of potential issues. Compatibility Matrix enables canary testing by simulating exact (or near) customer environments and configurations to test your application with.