Exit Status Propagation - CI/CD Glossary Definition

Exit status propagation ensures a failing command's non-zero exit code reaches CI so the step actually fails.

Exit status propagation is ensuring a failing command's non-zero exit code reaches CI so the step and job fail. Pipes and background subshells can swallow a failure, letting a broken build appear green.

Silent failures from masked exit codes are a classic source of false-green builds; correct propagation prevents them.

Guarding against masking

CI shells run with set -e and often set -o pipefail so a failure inside a pipe like a | tee log still fails the step. Without pipefail, only the last command's exit code counts.

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