Comparison
Artefact registryvsBuild artefact
Artefact registry
every build output is stored somewhere with a version and a retention policy, and deploying is a pull from there.
The store that holds published build outputs, with versioning, access control, retention and often scanning attached. It is the seam between build and deploy, and it is a production dependency: if it is unavailable, nothing scales up and no node is replaced. Retention policy is where it bites — the rollback target you need is the one the cleanup job deleted last week.
Full entry →Build artefact
the pipeline produces one file with one version, and everything downstream refers to that file rather than rebuilding.
The versioned output of a build — an image, an archive, a package — that later stages consume. Treating it as the unit of promotion is what makes environments comparable, because staging and production are then demonstrably the same bytes. A pipeline that rebuilds per environment has no such guarantee and is where 'it passed in staging' stops meaning anything.
Full entry →