# CI/CD Pipeline

## Introduction

In my last blog, I shared how I got started with deploying a **Next.js app on an EC2 instance** using:

* **EC2** for hosting
    
* **NVM** for Node version management
    
* **PM2** for keeping the app alive in the background
    
* **Nginx** as a reverse proxy to serve the app directly on port 80
    

That was a big step, but manually pulling code, building, and restarting the app isn’t scalable. Imagine having to SSH into the server and repeat these steps every time you push new code — it’s time-consuming and error-prone.

This is where **CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment)** comes in.

### **Explanation of CI/CD pipeline**

CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment and this is used to push any code changes directly to the production/dev environment.

### **Setting Up GitHub Actions**

I created a **GitHub Actions workflow** to automate my deployment:

1. Inside my repo, I added a `.github/workflows/deploy.yml` file.
    
2. Wrote a workflow that triggers on `push` to the main branch.
    
3. It connects to my EC2 instance via SSH, pulls the latest code, installs dependencies, builds the Next.js app, and restarts it with PM2.
    

Example snippet (simplified):

```bash
name: Deploy to EC2

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Deploy via SSH
        uses: appleboy/ssh-action@v0.1.10
        with:
          host: ${{ secrets.EC2_HOST }}
          username: ubuntu
          key: ${{ secrets.EC2_KEY }}
          script: |
            cd /home/ubuntu/my-app
            git pull origin main
            npm install
            npm run build
            pm2 restart next-app
```

With this in place, all I have to do is **push to GitHub** → and my EC2 server updates automatically. Magic.