What should a production-ready CI/CD pipeline look like for Stellar DevKit?**

[Ayinkx01]

Question:

What checks and release processes should Stellar DevKit implement before publishing stable releases of the SDK?

I would like to understand the best approach to:

1. Running unit tests and integration tests across supported environments.
2. Validating WASM inspection and Soroban RPC functionality.
3. Performing dependency and security checks.
4. Testing compatibility across supported Rust and SDK versions.
5. Automating release builds, changelogs and version tagging.
6. Preventing broken builds or untested changes from reaching published releases.

How would you structure a GitHub Actions pipeline that provides confidence in every release?

[Ayinkx]

I would structure the CI/CD pipeline into separate validation and release stages.

1. Pull request validation

Every pull request should trigger:

• Formatting checks.
• Linting and static analysis.
• Unit tests.
• Relevant integration tests.
• Documentation checks.
• Dependency and security audits.

2. Integration testing

Use mocked RPC responses for deterministic tests and a dedicated testnet workflow for validating real network interactions.

Test WASM parsing, contract inspection, simulation and transaction error handling.

3. Compatibility checks

Define a supported Rust toolchain and dependency policy. Test the supported version matrix rather than relying on one development environment.

4. Security checks

Include dependency vulnerability scanning, secret detection and appropriate static-analysis checks.

5. Release automation

Require successful CI checks before release publication. Automate version tagging, changelog generation, build artifacts and release notes.

6. Release verification

After publication, verify that the release artifacts are available, version metadata is correct and installation instructions work.

My recommendation is to make pull-request validation mandatory, keep release publishing separate from ordinary CI, and use reproducible builds wherever practical.