What is Cloud Build?
Answer
Cloud Build is GCP's fully managed CI/CD service for building, testing, and deploying software. Define build steps in a cloudbuild.yaml file: each step is a Docker container that performs a task (run tests, build a Docker image, push to Artifact Registry, deploy to Cloud Run or GKE). Cloud Build executes steps sequentially or in parallel. Triggers: build automatically when code is pushed to Cloud Source Repositories, GitHub, or Bitbucket. Integration with Binary Authorization: ensure only builds signed by Cloud Build are deployed. Build artifacts are stored in Artifact Registry (the successor to Container Registry). Private pools: use your own VMs for builds requiring VPC connectivity. Cloud Build is Google's native CI/CD option; it integrates seamlessly with other GCP services but also supports deploying to non-GCP targets.