CI/CD లో quality gates మరియు code quality checks అంటే ఏమిటి?

A QUALITY GATE is an automated CHECK that code must PASS to advance in the pipeline:
  → if the check fails, the pipeline STOPS (code doesn't merge/deploy)
  → enforces standards AUTOMATICALLY and consistently (not relying on humans to remember)
→ "Code must meet these standards to proceed" — automated, objective gates.

✓ TESTS — automated tests must pass (the primary gate)
✓ LINTING — code style/format consistency (ESLint, Prettier, etc.)
✓ STATIC ANALYSIS — detect bugs, code smells, complexity (SonarQube, etc.)
✓ CODE COVERAGE — require a minimum test coverage threshold (e.g. ≥80%)
✓ SECURITY SCANS — dependency vulnerabilities (SCA), code (SAST), secrets detection
✓ BUILD must succeed; type checking (TypeScript, etc.)
✓ Sometimes: performance budgets, bundle size limits, accessibility checks