Continuous Integration (CI) is a software development practice that involves regularly and automatically building, testing, and integrating changes to a codebase. The goal of CI is to catch and fix errors as early as possible in the development cycle, reducing the likelihood of bugs being introduced into the codebase and improving overall software quality.

In CI, developers integrate their changes into a shared code repository frequently, typically multiple times per day. Each integration triggers an automated build process that compiles the code, runs automated tests, and reports the results to the development team.

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By catching errors early in the development cycle, CI helps developers identify and resolve issues more quickly, reducing the time and cost of fixing bugs. It also helps to prevent integration problems that can arise when developers work in isolation for long periods of time and only integrate their changes at the end of a development cycle.

CI is often used in combination with other development practices like Continuous Delivery (CD) and Continuous Deployment (CD), which focus on automating the release and deployment of software changes. Together, these practices form a continuous delivery pipeline that enables teams to deliver high-quality software more quickly and reliably.