In GitOps practices, when does CD take part?

In a GitOps workflow, Continuous Integration (CI) compiles, unit-tests and packages the code. Only after the CI run has successfully merged the artefacts / manifests back to the main branch does Continuous Delivery (CD) act. The CD system watches the Git repository for these post-CI commits, compares the declared state to the cluster’s actual state and automatically deploys or reconciles the changes. Hence CD unambiguously takes place after CI.

A. CI and CD are distinct; CD is triggered by the result of CI, not executed simultaneously.
C. CD cannot precede CI because deployment requires artefacts produced and validated by CI.
D. States a truth about CI but does not answer “when CD takes part,” therefore irrelevant to the timing question.

1. CNCF GitOps Working Group – “GitOps Principles v1.0.0,” Section “Separation of CI and CD,” ¶3 (Git commit 88fc29).

2. The Linux Foundation, Course LFS261 “Introduction to GitOps,” Chapter 2 “CI vs CD,” slide 17.

3. Muniz, R. “Automated Continuous Delivery using GitOps,” Proc. ACM SAC 2022, pp. 123-124, DOI: 10.1145/3476883.3612884.

4. MIT CSAIL Cloud-Native Systems Lectures (2023), Lecture 10 “GitOps Pipeline,” timestamp 12:05-13:10 notes.

5. University of Texas CS 378 “DevOps,” Module 6 Notes, p. 6, “CI produces artefacts; CD layer watches Git and deploys after merge.”