Core Concepts

This article introduces the core concepts of Zadig to help users establish a basic understanding of the platform.

Requires familiarity with Git, Docker, Kubernetes, and Continuous Delivery concepts.

# Project

A Zadig project is a complete business unit, product, or system that includes workflows, environments, services, builds, tests, code scans, versions, and other resources. Users can perform service development, deployment, integration testing, and version release within a project to achieve continuous delivery.

# Workflow

A typical software development process includes: Write code → Build → Deploy → Test → Release.

A workflow is Zadig's implementation of this process, enabling updates to services or configurations in the environment.

In the Zadig workflow, tasks can be freely arranged and execution steps customized. The workflow supports configuration changes, data changes, canary releases, and more. Supported task types include: builds, deployments, tests, release strategies, project management, configuration changes, data changes, and custom tasks.

# Environment

A Zadig environment is a collection of services, their configurations, and runtime environment, mapped one-to-one with a Kubernetes Namespace. Multiple environments can be created from a single set of service templates.

# Service

A service in Zadig is a set of Kubernetes resources (such as Ingress, Service, Deployment/StatefulSet/CronJob, InitContainer, ConfigMap, etc.), or a complete Helm Chart, or a cloud/physical machine service. Successfully deployed services provide external capabilities.

# Service Components

Service components are the smallest independently updatable units in container services. A service may contain multiple service components.

# Build

Zadig builds are part of service configuration and are invoked during workflow execution. Builds have a one-to-many relationship with services, allowing a single build to be shared by multiple services.

# Test

Zadig tests are project resources and can also be used as optional stages in workflows, supporting cross-project usage.

# Code Scanning

Zadig code scans are project resources and support orchestration in custom workflows.

# Version Management

Zadig versions are complete, reliable deliverables, such as Helm Charts or full K8s YAML configuration files.