Comparison
Build pipelinevsPipeline as code
Build pipeline
a merge triggers a sequence of stages on someone else's machine, and the sequence is now the only way anything reaches production.
The automated sequence that turns a commit into a tested, published artefact and then into a deployment. It is infrastructure in its own right — it has uptime, capacity, credentials and a blast radius — and it is usually the most privileged system a team operates while receiving the least operational attention. Its slowness is a direct tax on every change, which is why build time is a reliability metric rather than a convenience one.
Full entry →Pipeline as code
the pipeline definition lives in the repository it builds, so changing it is a pull request rather than a click.
Defining the delivery process in a versioned file alongside the code rather than in a server's user interface. It gives the pipeline review, history and branching — a change to the build can be tested on a branch before it affects everyone. The trade is that the pipeline definition is now attacker-reachable through a pull request, which is why what a fork's pipeline may do with credentials is a real security question.
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