As objects pass testing in the development environment, the objects are continuously delivered to the production environment. Based on organizational requirements, you can set up continuous delivery to additional environments, such as QA and UAT, before delivering the objects to the production environment.
To simplify continuous delivery, you can use archive files to create consistency between the objects that were tested and approved in the development environment and the objects that are delivered to additional environments. To create consistency, set up continuous delivery to deploy objects to one archive file, store the archive file in a version control system, and deploy the archive file to each environment.
The following image shows how one application patch archive file can be deployed to development, QA, UAT, and production environments:
Objects are deployed to an application patch archive file.
The archive file is stored in a version control system.
The same archive file is deployed to development, QA, UAT, and production environments.