CI/CD (Fast Feedback, Safe Delivery)

When to use

• Creating or updating CI workflows.
• Reducing pipeline duration or flaky failures.
• Defining release gating for production deployments.

Steps

1) Define triggers and required checks

• Trigger CI on pull requests and pushes to main.
• Mark format/analyze/test workflows as required checks before merge.
• Keep required checks minimal but sufficient for regression prevention.

2) Keep jobs deterministic and isolated

• Pin SDK/tool versions in CI.
• Avoid shared mutable state between jobs.
• Fail fast on unstable or network-fragile tests; move those to dedicated integration flows.

3) Order jobs for fast feedback

• Run formatting and static analysis first.
• Run unit/widget tests next.
• Run heavier build/signing jobs only after quality checks pass.

4) Optimize execution time

• Cache pub dependencies and reusable artifacts where CI supports it.
• Parallelize independent jobs (for example test shards or package groups).
• Prefer incremental, targeted test/build scopes when the repository supports it.

5) Gate production delivery

• Keep production deployment behind explicit approval or protected release jobs.
• Use feature flags or staged rollout for high-risk functionality.

6) Continuously tune pipeline quality

• Track pipeline duration and flaky test rate.
• Fix flaky tests before adding new jobs.
• Revisit required checks when architecture or tooling changes.