CircleCI Pipeline Configuration Cheat Sheet

A quick reference guide to configuring CI/CD build environments and automated deployment jobs with CircleCI.

Pipeline Lifecycle Stages

• machine: Configure base VM runtime, operating system, and language version.
• checkout: Clone git repositories and initialize submodules.
• dependencies: Restore cached libraries and install language dependencies.
• database: Provision test database tables and load schemas.
• test: Run unit, functional, and integration test suites.
• deployment: Push passing artifacts to staging or production targets.

---

Configuration Example

version: 2.1

executors:
  node-executor:
    docker:
      - image: cimg/node:18.16.0
      - image: cimg/postgres:14.2
        environment:
          POSTGRES_USER: ubuntu
          POSTGRES_DB: app_test
          POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ""

jobs:
  build-and-test:
    executor: node-executor
    steps:
      - checkout
      - restore_cache:
          keys:
            - v1-deps-{{ checksum "package-lock.json" }}
            - v1-deps-
      - run:
          name: Install Dependencies
          command: npm ci
      - save_cache:
          key: v1-deps-{{ checksum "package-lock.json" }}
          paths:
            - ~/.npm
      - run:
          name: Run Unit Tests
          command: npm test

workflows:
  build-pipeline:
    jobs:
      - build-and-test