Nightly Build - CI/CD Glossary Definition

A nightly build is an automated build produced on a schedule (typically once per day) from the latest mainline code, used to catch integration problems and to give early access to unreleased changes.

In CI

Nightly builds are triggered by a cron schedule rather than a push, so they run heavier suites (full matrices, long integration tests) that would be too slow on every commit.

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