# DevOps

> CI/CD, automation, and infrastructure as code - shipping safely and repeatedly.

9 guides.

- [What DevOps Actually Is](https://themissingmanual.dev/guides/what-devops-is) _(beginner)_ - DevOps isn't a team or a tool - it's the way of working where the people who build software and the people who run it share one loop and one responsibility, so changes ship faster and break less.
- [Environment Variables & Config (.env, YAML)](https://themissingmanual.dev/guides/env-vars-and-config) _(beginner)_ - What config files really do, why settings live outside your code, how environment variables and .env files work, and how YAML/JSON/TOML and config precedence fit together.
- [Build & Release Basics](https://themissingmanual.dev/guides/build-and-release-basics) _(beginner)_ - How source code becomes a thing you can actually ship: what a build produces, why you version and freeze artifacts, and how the same artifact moves from dev to staging to prod.
- [What a CI/CD Pipeline Actually Does](https://themissingmanual.dev/guides/what-cicd-does) _(intermediate)_ - CI/CD is the automated path from a commit to production: every change is built and tested automatically, and releases become small, frequent, and safe to roll back.
- [Your First Pipeline (GitHub Actions)](https://themissingmanual.dev/guides/your-first-pipeline-github-actions) _(intermediate)_ - What a GitHub Actions workflow actually is - events trigger jobs made of steps that run on a runner - then a real ci.yml decoded line by line, plus caching, matrices, secrets, and required checks.
- [Automating the Boring Stuff (Ops Scripting)](https://themissingmanual.dev/guides/automating-the-boring-stuff) _(intermediate)_ - Turn the manual tasks you keep redoing by hand into scripts that are faster, repeatable, and self-documenting - from the when-to-automate mindset to a real bash backup script to knowing when to reach for Python and cron.
- [Infrastructure as Code (Terraform Basics)](https://themissingmanual.dev/guides/infrastructure-as-code-terraform) _(advanced)_ - Stop clicking around in cloud consoles. Define your servers, networks, and databases in version-controlled files you can review and apply - that's Infrastructure as Code, and Terraform is how a huge slice of the industry does it.
- [Zero-Downtime Deploys](https://themissingmanual.dev/guides/zero-downtime-deploys) _(intermediate)_ - Ship a new version without a maintenance window: rolling, blue-green, and canary deploys, plus the health checks and migrations that make them safe.
- [Feature Flags and Rollbacks](https://themissingmanual.dev/guides/feature-flags-and-rollbacks) _(intermediate)_ - Ship code dark, flip it on for a few users, and turn it off instantly when it breaks: feature flags decouple deploy from release.