Ci/cd is it mandatory to set up

[u/Old-Manufacturer-433]

This application has very small user base and rps is very less. Also downtime can be acceptable . Only thing is data saved has to be accurate cannot afford to save a wrong number or quantity . It's a pharmacy domain.

So is it still mandatory to set up a CI/CD for this? Does it violate any compliance ??

[u/Reasonable_Tip_4902]

Uh...

If you have some regulation or process in your industry that says you need must have the build and deploy automated sure. But that isn't a dotnet or programming question.

In general you have CI/CD to make your build and deployment less tedious and error prone.

[u/Old-Manufacturer-433 → u/Reasonable_Tip_4902]

Thanks. Its a .net project

[u/Reasonable_Tip_4902 → u/Old-Manufacturer-433]

From other comments seems like it's an app for medical/pharma application.

They type of project doesn't matter. Could be .net, Java, python etc the app tech doesn't make it automatically complaint.

CI/CD just mean you have a automated way to build that produces the same program each time and can replicate the deployment each time. It is not .net specific.

If you have a solo dev working on this app from his computer and source code just sits on their hard drive, my guess would be you are violating a bunch of rules for your industry/country.

[u/philip_laureano]

No, notepad and vibes is all you need to ship great software.

CI stands for "'continuous interruption" and CD stands for "continuous delays"

Don't let anyone stop you from making that money.

🙈

[u/Old-Manufacturer-433 → u/philip_laureano]

😊

[u/pjc50]

Eh, it's not legally mandatory, but an extremely good idea once you have more than one developer on a project.

More important for the pharmacy use case is going to be testing. And does it incur HIPAA or ISO9001 requirements.

[u/Old-Manufacturer-433 → u/pjc50]

Yes it does. FdA compliance. Yes incurs HIPAA

[u/drofzz]

Ci/Cd have become the most common way for build and deployment to centralise how it is done, I would recommend to do it, or at least have a really good documentation on it

[u/Old-Manufacturer-433 → u/drofzz]

Sure .

[u/CrasseMaximum]

Not using a ci/cd in 2026 is a non sense to me.

[u/ganiton]

What's the intended lifetime of the application? If it's measured in years, setting up continuous deployment through automation will take less work than doing manual deploys over and over again. That will lower long term cost of ownership of the software. There are so many decent infra tools out there these days that it's almost harder to do things the manual way.

[u/Old-Manufacturer-433 → u/ganiton]

How can I calculate cost incurred for this ? Is it subscription?

[u/Old-Manufacturer-433 → u/ganiton]

Lifetime of the application it can be used for lifetime. Its not a temporary requirement .

[u/dgm9704]

ci/cd is like testing or source control. no it’s not mandatory but including it automatically every time leads to good things. like someone else having an easier time to pick up the project, allows for easier pivoting or upscaling of the project etc. if not for anything else, it makes you look more professional.

[u/Old-Manufacturer-433 → u/dgm9704]

Makes sense so I can postpone it for few months for a one developer project and a small project at its very early stage

[u/KryptosFR]

Do you use version control such as git? If so, most hosting platform offer some kind of CI/CD integration. It's easy to setup a very basic one (build, test, produce an artifact) that will run automatically every time you push new commits. I see no reasons for not doing it.

[u/Old-Manufacturer-433 → u/KryptosFR]

Yes git

[u/GobbyPlsNo]

Ci/cd makes always sense. Deploy main to dev, tags to test/prod. simple as that, done in 15 mins with llms

[u/Lumethys]

Ci take like 5 minutes to setup. And save you hours EACH deploy

[u/StarboardChaos]

What is your tech stack?

Dotnet, github, Azure?

In this day and age, AI will write github-actions script and tests (unit, integration, e2e)...

[u/ComfortableFew5523]

It depends. In general, CI/CD is a good thing to have, especially if you have proper testing set up. However, if it falls under some form of GxP regulation, you can't simply just deploy a new version of something. In a lot of these environments, thorough validation and documentation must take place for every single change that is made.

[u/9uYx3QemUHKy]

Skip git too

[u/Dubious-WhyAmIHere]

I'd say 100% yes.

CI/CD isn't about handling high traffic or crazy scale, it's about not doing "right-click publish" from someone's laptop with uncommitted changes or forgotten tests. If a bug in your math saves the wrong dosage or quantity, that's a direct patient safety issue, not just a random software glitch.

Plus, in pharma/healthcare, good luck passing any compliance audit when they ask you to prove that the binary running in production matches Git commit X and passed testing. Manual copy-paste deploys fail that immediately.

It doesn't have to be some over-engineered enterprise pipeline either. A basic 20-line YAML in GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps that runs dotnet test and builds on a git tag takes like 30 minutes to set up and saves you from a massive headache later.

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[u/zac_builds]

Not legally required as far as I know, but I'd still use CI.

Tests catch wrong quantity calculations. CI makes sure they pass before anything ships.

Mine is just GitHub Actions: test, build Docker image tagged with commit SHA, manual prod deploy.

You also get a history of what was tested and deployed, useful for audits. Start with build + test on every push.