Imperative Pipeline - CI/CD Glossary Definition

An imperative pipeline spells out each build step and its execution order explicitly in a script, giving fine control at the cost of more manual wiring.

An imperative pipeline spells out each build step and its execution order explicitly in a script, giving fine control at the cost of more manual wiring.

Imperative pipelines read like a program: do this, then that, checking results as you go.

Trade-offs

Imperative scripts handle unusual logic well but are harder for a CI platform to parallelize or resume automatically. Many teams wrap imperative scripts inside declarative pipeline steps.

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