GitOps: Episode One — GitOps vs. Traditional CI/CD

In the previous post, we opened the door to GitOps — what it is, why it’s gaining traction, and what this series will cover. Now, it’s time to zoom in on a key question:

GitOps vs CI/CD — what’s the actual difference?

If you’ve worked with modern DevOps pipelines — especially with tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions — you already know the rhythm: code is pushed, tests are run, builds are made, and then a deployment script pushes everything to your servers or Kubernetes cluster.

It’s a reliable workflow, and it’s served teams well for years.

But GitOps challenges that model. It proposes a shift — from imperative, script-driven deployments to declarative, version-controlled, automated infrastructure. This shift isn’t just technical; it changes how teams think about infrastructure, deployments, and even collaboration.

In this post, we’ll break down how traditional CI/CD pipelines work, what GitOps does differently, and why that difference might be worth embracing.

Traditional CI/CD

Before diving into GitOps, it’s important to understand how we typically handle deployments today — using traditional CI/CD pipelines.

In most DevOps workflows, CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (or Delivery). While these terms are often bundled together, they each serve distinct purposes:

• Continuous Integration (CI) is all about automation during the build and test phase. When developers push changes to a shared repository, the pipeline automatically runs unit tests, builds artifacts (like Docker images), and ensures everything integrates smoothly.
• Continuous Deployment (CD) kicks in after that. It’s responsible for delivering the built artifacts to a live environment — like a development or production Kubernetes cluster.

In practice, CI/CD tools like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, and Jenkins manage this entire process from end to end. They run your scripts, build your containers, and deploy your application using command-line tools like:

kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
helm upgrade myapp ./chart

All of this usually happens in a centralized pipeline triggered by code pushes or pull requests.

In this model, the pipeline is the actor — it’s what pushes changes into the cluster. If a developer merges a PR, the pipeline might build the new image and use a CLI script to update the Kubernetes Deployment.

The cluster is passive here — it simply receives whatever the pipeline tells it to apply. This is called an imperative deployment model.

What Is GitOps? (And How It’s Different)

At the heart of GitOps is a simple but powerful concept:

Your Git repository is the single source of truth for everything that runs in your system.

Instead of writing scripts that push changes to your infrastructure, you write declarative configurations — often YAML files — and store them in Git. These configs describe the desired state of your system: what services should run, what versions, what settings, and more.

But the real magic happens in how these changes are applied.

Pull, Not Push

With GitOps, you don’t run kubectl or helm directly in your pipelines anymore. Instead, a GitOps agent — like Flux or Argo CD — runs inside your Kubernetes cluster and constantly watches the Git repository for changes.

When a change is detected (e.g., a new image tag or an updated config), the agent pulls the change and applies it to the cluster. It also continuously checks whether the cluster matches the state defined in Git — and if something drifts, it fixes it automatically.

This is known as a pull-based deployment model, and it brings a few major benefits:

• No manual deployments
• Automatic sync and reconciliation
• Version control for your infrastructure

Key Differences — GitOps vs Traditional CI/CD

The biggest shift GitOps introduces is who controls the deployment process — and where your system’s truth actually lives.

Push vs Pull

Traditional pipelines push changes into the cluster using tools like kubectl. GitOps agents pull changes from Git and apply them from inside the cluster. This reduces external access and improves security.

Single Source of Truth

In CI/CD, configurations often live in multiple places — Git, CI jobs, or local scripts. GitOps centralizes everything in one place: Git. If it’s not in Git, it doesn’t happen.

Reconciliation and Drift Detection

CI/CD is “fire and forget.” GitOps continuously checks that the cluster matches what’s in Git — and corrects it if anything drifts.

Rollbacks

CI/CD rollbacks are manual or pipeline-based. GitOps rollbacks are just git revert, and the agent syncs automatically.

Auditability

GitOps gives you a full audit trail of infra changes — just like code. No guessing who changed what.

When Should You Use GitOps?

GitOps isn’t a silver bullet — but in the right context, it’s a powerful upgrade.

You should consider GitOps if:

• You’re using Kubernetes or planning to
• Your infrastructure is already declarative (or you want it to be)
• You need to manage multiple environments (dev, staging, prod)
• You value repeatability, transparency, and automation
• You want to empower teams to deploy safely, without direct cluster access

It may not be the best fit for very early-stage projects or small apps without much infrastructure, but it scales beautifully as complexity grows.

For me, as someone learning this now, GitOps feels like a natural evolution — especially in cloud-native environments.

What’s Next

In this post, we explored how GitOps compares to traditional CI/CD — not just in tools, but in mindset.

We saw how GitOps moves us from pushing changes manually to letting the system manage itself, from scattered config to one unified source of truth, and from reactive pipelines to proactive reconciliation.

If you’re learning GitOps like I am, this comparison helps frame why it’s worth the effort to adopt. It’s not just a trend — it’s a foundation for building reliable, automated, and transparent systems.

In the next post, we’ll get our hands dirty:

Setting up a GitOps-ready Kubernetes cluster and preparing for FluxCD.

We’ll go step by step — so if you’re following along, you’ll be able to set up your own GitOps environment by the end of it.

✅ Quick Recap

• GitOps is pull-based, not push-based
• Git becomes the source of truth
• The cluster stays in sync with declarative code
• You gain auditability, rollback, and automation out of the box

Thanks for joining me on this learning journey. If you have thoughts or questions, feel free to reach out or leave a comment — I’m learning too, and that’s the point of this series.

See you in Episode Two!

• GitOps: Episode Zero — Why You Should Care and What to Expect

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