Continuous integration

Frequent and reliable code deployments.

Drupal continuous integration overview

Aim

Design and build a system for efficiently and reliably integrating code into the production codebase.

Approach

Build a tool pipeline utilising external services help manage the testing and release of code.

Outcome

A code release cycle which allows incremental improvements to be integrated and released.

Drupal continuous integration

Continuous integration refers to the process by which developers are frequently able to merge their code into the codebase and have automated tests check the integration of that code for errors. Typical tests include test for coding standard, unit test and behavioural tests. The automated process doesn't mean that there will be no errors, just that the errors will be found more quickly, many (ideally all) of them before reaching the production environment. Having a computer run the tests frees developers from having to manually run checks every time code is released.

Frequently asked questions

Morpht builds quality into the development process through continuous integration (CI) pipelines that automate testing and code quality checks at each deployment. Automated testing covers accessibility (using tools including Cypress-based editorial workflow testing), functional testing of content types and components, and regression testing for critical user journeys. Morpht also performs manual accessibility audits, cross-browser testing, and performance profiling before site launches. For GovCMS clients, Morpht's security hardening checklist ensures compliance with government security requirements.

Continuous integration and deployment pipelines catch bugs, security issues and accessibility regressions before they reach a live citizen-facing site, and they let content and functionality updates ship faster and more safely than manual deployment. For a government site handling sensitive information or high traffic, the cost of an undetected regression is materially higher than for a typical commercial site.

A proper CI pipeline automatically runs tests (including visual regression tools like BackstopJS, which the Drupal community has been actively developing for exactly this purpose) on every code change, catching problems before deployment rather than relying on manual QA alone, this is a meaningful differentiator when comparing support providers, since manual-only QA processes scale poorly as a site grows.

It should be considered standard practice for any PaaS build with custom code, since PaaS environments give you the flexibility (and responsibility) that SaaS doesn't, that flexibility is only safe to exercise with proper automated testing and deployment discipline behind it.

Yes. Drupal has sophisticated built-in content moderation capabilities including configurable workflow states (draft, needs review, published, archived), role-based editorial permissions, content revision history, and scheduled publishing. These can be extended with automated testing of workflows using tools like Cypress. Morpht has worked on government sites where multiple stakeholders, business units, and approval chains govern content publishing; Drupal's workflow system accommodates these requirements without requiring custom development.

Insights

Beer poured from clean pipelines
Article

The Morpht CI pipeline caught a recent vulnerability in Drupal core which led to the problem promptly being fixed.