Enterprises are making their moves toward DevOps methodologies and Agile culture to accelerate delivery speed and ensure product quality. In DevOps, a continuous and automated delivery cycle is the backbone that makes fast and reliable delivery possible.
This results in the need for proper continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) tools. A “good” CI/CD tool can leverage teams’ current workflow, to best exploit the automation feature and create a solid CI/CD pipeline, and give teams the boost they need to thrive. If you are new to CI/CD, please check out this blog.
With the overflowing number of CI/CD tools available in the market, teams may struggle to have to make difficult decisions to pick out the right tools. This list contains the “Best 5 CI/CD tools in the market”, along with their key features, to make the selection process easier for you and your team.
1. Jenkins
Jenkins is an open-source automation server in which the central build and continuous integration process take place. It is a self-contained Java-based program with packages for Windows, macOS, and other Unix-like operating systems. With hundreds of plugins available, Jenkins supports building, deploying, and automating software development projects.
Jenkins key features:
- Easy installation and upgrade on various OSs
- Simple and user-friendly interface
- Extensible with huge community-contributed plugin resource
- Easy environment configuration in the user interface
- Supports distributed builds with master-slave architecture
- Build schedules based on expressions
- Supports shells and Windows command execution in pre-build steps
- Supports notification on the build status
License: Free. Jenkins is an open-source tool with an active community.
Homepage: https://jenkins.io/
2. CircleCI
CircleCI is a CI/CD tool that supports rapid software development and publishing. CircleCI allows automation across the user’s pipeline, from code building, testing to deployment.
You can integrate CircleCI with GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, and Bitbucket to create builds when new code lines are committed. CircleCI also hosts continuous integration under the cloud-managed option or runs behind a firewall on private infrastructure.
CircleCI key features:
- Integrates with Bitbucket, GitHub, and GitHub Enterprise
- Runs builds using a container or virtual machine
- Easy debugging
- Automated parallelization
- Quick tests
- Personalized email and IM notifications
- Continuous and branch-specific deployment
- Highly customizable
- Automated merging and custom commands for package uploading
- Fast setup and unlimited builds
License: Linux plans start with the option to run one job without parallelism at no charge. Open-source projects get three additional free containers. During signup, you will see the pricing to decide which plan(s) you need.
Homepage: https://circleci.com/
3. TeamCity
TeamCity is a JetBrains’s build management and continuous integration server.
TeamCity is a continuous integration tool that helps build and deploy different types of projects. TeamCity runs in a Java environment and integrates with Visual Studio and IDEs. The tool can be installed on both Windows and Linux servers and supports .NET and open-stack projects.
TeamCity 2019.1 provides a new UI and native GitLab integration. It also supports GitLab and Bitbucket server pull requests. The release includes token-based authentication, detection, reporting of Go tests, and AWS Spot Fleet requests.
TeamCity key features:
- Provides multiple ways to reuse settings and configurations of the parent project to the subproject
- Runs parallel builds simultaneously on different environments
- Enables running history builds, viewing test history reports, pinning, tagging, and adding builds to favorites
- Easy to customize, interact with, and extend the server
- Keeps the CI server functional and stable
- Flexible user management, user roles assignment, sorting users into groups, different ways of user authentication, and a log with all user actions for transparency of all activities on the server
License: TeamCity is a commercial tool with both free and proprietary licenses.
Homepage: https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/
4. Bamboo
Bamboo is a continuous integration server that automates the management of software application releases, thus creating a continuous delivery pipeline. Bamboo covers building and functional testing, assigning versions, tagging releases, deploying and activating new versions on production.
Bamboo key features:
- Supports up to 100 remote build agents
- Run batches of tests in parallel and get feedback quickly
- Creates images and pushes them into a registry
- Per-environment permissions that allow developers and testers to deploy to their environments on-demand while the production stays locked down
- Detects new branches in Git, Mercurial, and SVN Repos and applies the main line’s CI scheme to them automatically
- Triggers build based on the changes detected in the repository. Pushes notifications from Bitbucket, a set schedule, the completion of another build, or any combination thereof.
License: Bamboo pricing tiers are based on agents or “build slaves” rather than users. The more agents, the more processes it can run concurrently – either in the same build or different builds.
Homepage: https://www.atlassian.com/software/bamboo
5. GitLab
GitLab is a suite of tools for managing different aspects of the software development lifecycle. The core product is a web-based Git repository manager with features such as issue tracking, analytics, and a Wiki.
GitLab allows you to trigger builds, run tests, and deploy code with each commit or push. You can build jobs in a virtual machine, Docker container, or on another server.
GitLab key features:
- View, create, and manage codes and project data through branching tools
- Design, develop, and manage codes and project data from a single distributed version control system, enabling rapid iteration and delivery of business values
- Provides a single source of truth and scalability for collaborating on projects and code
- Helps delivery teams fully embrace CI by automating the builds, integration, and verification of source codes
- Provides container scanning, static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), and dependency scanning to deliver secure applications along with license compliance
- Helps automate and shorten releases and delivery of applications
License: GitLab is a commercial tool and free package. It offers hosting SaaS on GitLab or on your instance on-premises and/or on the public cloud.
Homepage: https://about.gitlab.com/
