What does "build step" mean?

The term build step is used everywhere, yet I searched both google.com and qwant.com to no avail. That baffles my mind.

I also searched for a developer terminology index. Anyone has a good explanation of this term?

In a CI/CD pipeline a build step is whatever you want it to be. It is the equivalent of a function or procedure from a traditional programming language. Examples of build steps from a CI/CD environment:

• setup a clean build or test environment by spinning up instances, starting databases, loading data, etc.

• get code from github/gitlab/etc.

• compile a component of the application

• send artifact from previous build step to a repo

Notice that in the CI/CD world a build step is not necessarily building anything, but it might be preparing something to be built or doing something with an artifact of a build.

StackExchange DevOps Q#12667, answer score: 3