Overview

Visual Studio App Center

Stacks117

Followers232

Votes4

GitHub Actions

Stacks24.2K

Followers3.1K

Votes27

Github Actions vs Visual Studio App Center: What are the differences?

Introduction

GitHub Actions and Visual Studio App Center are both popular tools used in software development to automate tasks and improve productivity. However, they have key differences that set them apart from each other. In this article, we will explore and highlight these differences.

Platform Compatibility: GitHub Actions is specifically designed for GitHub repositories and seamlessly integrates with the GitHub ecosystem. On the other hand, Visual Studio App Center is a more versatile solution that supports multiple platforms including GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, and Azure DevOps. This makes Visual Studio App Center a better choice if you work with repositories hosted on different platforms.
Supported Workflows: GitHub Actions is optimized for CI/CD workflows and provides native support for building, testing, and deploying software. It allows developers to define their workflows as code using YAML files. Visual Studio App Center, on the other hand, provides a comprehensive mobile app lifecycle management solution. It not only supports CI/CD workflows but also provides tools for distribution, crash reporting, and analytics. If you are primarily focused on mobile app development, Visual Studio App Center provides a more specialized set of features.
Community Support: GitHub Actions benefits from the large and active GitHub community. Developers can easily find and share pre-defined workflows, actions, and integrations through the GitHub Marketplace. Visual Studio App Center also has a community, but it may not be as extensive as the GitHub ecosystem. If community support and the availability of ready-to-use workflows are important to you, GitHub Actions is the way to go.
Customizability: GitHub Actions provides a flexible and customizable environment. Developers can use any programming language, runtime, or tool to build their workflows. They can also leverage the vast collection of actions available in the GitHub Marketplace or create their own custom actions. Visual Studio App Center, on the other hand, provides a more opinionated approach with built-in support for popular programming languages, frameworks, and platforms. If you prefer a more customized and flexible setup, GitHub Actions offers more options.
Pricing Model: GitHub Actions offers a generous free tier with a certain limit on usage, and additional paid plans for higher usage requirements. Visual Studio App Center has a similar model, providing a free tier and paid plans based on usage and additional features. The specifics of pricing may vary, so it's important to evaluate the pricing structure of each tool to determine which one is more cost-effective for your specific needs.
Maturity and Integration: GitHub Actions has been around since 2019 and has gained significant adoption in the developer community. It has matured over time and continuously introduces new features and improvements. Visual Studio App Center has a longer history, starting as Xamarin Test Cloud before being integrated into Visual Studio. It has a strong integration with Azure services and Microsoft ecosystem, making it an attractive choice for organizations heavily invested in Microsoft technologies.

In summary, GitHub Actions is more focused on CI/CD workflows for GitHub repositories with extensive community support and customizability, while Visual Studio App Center offers a broader mobile app lifecycle management solution supporting multiple platforms and stronger integration with Azure and Microsoft technologies. The choice between the two tools depends on your specific requirements, platform compatibility, and the level of customization needed.

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Advice on Visual Studio App Center, GitHub Actions

Somnath

Engineering Leader at Altimetrik Corp.

Jun 25, 2020

Needs adviceon

CircleCI

Drone.io

GitHub Actions

I am in the process of evaluating CircleCI, Drone.io, and GitHub Actions to cover my #CI/ #CD needs. I would appreciate your advice on comparative study w.r.t. attributes like language-Inclusive support, code-base integration, performance, cost, maintenance, support, ease of use, ability to deal with big projects, etc. based on actual industry experience.

Thanks in advance!

1.82M views1.82M

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Visual Studio App Center	GitHub Actions
Automate the lifecycle of your iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS apps. Connect your repo and within minutes build in the cloud, test on thousands of real devices, distribute to beta testers and app stores, and monitor real-world usage with crash and analytics data. All in one place.	It makes it easy to automate all your software workflows, now with world-class CI/CD. Build, test, and deploy your code right from GitHub. Make code reviews, branch management, and issue triaging work the way you want.
Build; Test; Distribute; Crashes; Diagnostics; Analytics; Push; CD/CI;	Multiple workflow files support; Free and open source; Workflow run interface; Search for actions in GitHub Marketplace; Integrated with Github's Checks API; Logs and artifacts downloading support
Statistics
Stacks 117	Stacks 24.2K
Followers 232	Followers 3.1K
Votes 4	Votes 27
Pros & Cons
Pros 1 Show error issues for mobile devices 1 Bug tracking integration 1 Slack integration 1 For Mobile apps diagnostics and tracking	Pros 8 Integration with GitHub 5 Free 3 Easy to duplicate a workflow 3 Ready actions in Marketplace 2 Read actions in Marketplace Cons 5 Lacking [skip ci] 4 Lacking allow failure 3 Lacking job specific badges 2 No ssh login to servers 1 No manual launch
Integrations
GitHub Bitbucket Azure DevOps Slack	GitHub

What are some alternatives to Visual Studio App Center, GitHub Actions?

Jenkins

In a nutshell Jenkins CI is the leading open-source continuous integration server. Built with Java, it provides over 300 plugins to support building and testing virtually any project.

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

Travis CI

Free for open source projects, our CI environment provides multiple runtimes (e.g. Node.js or PHP versions), data stores and so on. Because of this, hosting your project on travis-ci.com means you can effortlessly test your library or applications against multiple runtimes and data stores without even having all of them installed locally.

Codeship

Codeship runs your automated tests and configured deployment when you push to your repository. It takes care of managing and scaling the infrastructure so that you are able to test and release more frequently and get faster feedback for building the product your users need.

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

CircleCI

Continuous integration and delivery platform helps software teams rapidly release code with confidence by automating the build, test, and deploy process. Offers a modern software development platform that lets teams ramp.

Xamarin

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

TeamCity

TeamCity is a user-friendly continuous integration (CI) server for professional developers, build engineers, and DevOps. It is trivial to setup and absolutely free for small teams and open source projects.