Priority Queue - CI/CD Glossary Definition
A priority queue runs higher-priority CI jobs ahead of lower-priority ones.
A priority queue is a job queue that dispatches higher-priority jobs before lower-priority ones rather than in strict arrival order, so urgent runs (release builds, main-branch CI) jump ahead.
A priority queue orders waiting jobs by an assigned priority instead of purely by submission time. This lets critical pipelines preempt best-effort work when runners are scarce.
In CI
Common priorities put main-branch and release jobs above pull-request retries and nightly jobs, so a queue backlog never blocks a hotfix.