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Appveyor vs Travis CI: What are the differences?
Key Differences between Appveyor and Travis CI
Introduction: Appveyor and Travis CI are both continuous integration (CI) platforms that help automate the process of building, testing, and deploying software projects. While they share similar goals, there are key differences between the two that make each platform unique and suitable for different use cases.
Environment Support: Appveyor mainly targets Windows-based platforms, providing a wide range of Windows operating systems, Visual Studio versions, and .NET frameworks for testing and deployment. On the other hand, Travis CI is primarily designed for Linux and macOS environments, and while it does support Windows, it has more limited capabilities for Windows-based projects.
Configuration: Appveyor uses a declarative approach for configuration where the build and testing settings are defined in a YAML file. This makes it straightforward to set up and configure projects without the need for complex scripting. In contrast, Travis CI relies on a scripting language (typically YAML or Bash) for configuring build steps and running tests, allowing for more customization and flexibility.
Parallelization: Appveyor has built-in support for parallel builds, allowing users to split their tests across multiple machines or stages to speed up the overall build process. This can be particularly useful for large projects with extensive test suites. Travis CI, on the other hand, does not have native support for parallelization and relies on third-party tools or custom scripting to achieve similar functionality.
Pricing Structure: Appveyor offers a variety of pricing plans including a free tier for open-source projects, as well as paid plans for additional features and increased build capacity. They also provide custom enterprise plans for organizations that require dedicated resources. In comparison, Travis CI offers a free tier for open-source projects, but for private repositories or additional features like parallelization and increased concurrency, users need to upgrade to one of their paid plans.
Integration Ecosystem: Travis CI has strong integration with GitHub, making it seamless to set up and run builds for projects hosted on the platform. It also has extensive support for popular programming languages and frameworks, with pre-configured build environments for widely used technologies. Appveyor, on the other hand, offers integration with various version control systems including GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, catering to a broader range of developers and development workflows.
Windows-specific Features: As a Windows-centric CI platform, Appveyor provides features that are specific to the Windows ecosystem. This includes support for running tests on different versions of Internet Explorer, Windows Server, and SQL Server. It also offers compatibility with various Windows-specific tools and libraries. In contrast, Travis CI's focus on Linux and macOS limits its support for Windows-specific technologies and features.
In summary, Appveyor and Travis CI differ in terms of their supported environments, configuration approaches, parallelization capabilities, pricing structures, integration ecosystems, and Windows-specific features. Understanding these differences is crucial in choosing the right CI platform that aligns with the specific needs of a software development project.
From a StackShare Community member: "Currently we use Travis CI and have optimized it as much as we can so our builds are fairly quick. Our boss is all about redundancy so we are looking for another solution to fall back on in case Travis goes down and/or jacks prices way up (they were recently acquired). Could someone recommend which CI we should go with and if they have time, an explanation of how they're different?"
We use CircleCI because of the better value it provides in its plans. I'm sure we could have used Travis just as easily but we found CircleCI's pricing to be more reasonable. In the two years since we signed up, the service has improved. CircleCI is always innovating and iterating on their platform. We have been very satisfied.
As the maintainer of the Karate DSL open-source project - I found Travis CI very easy to integrate into the GitHub workflow and it has been steady sailing for more than 2 years now ! It works well for Java / Apache Maven projects and we were able to configure it to use the latest Oracle JDK as per our needs. Thanks to the Travis CI team for this service to the open-source community !
I use Google Cloud Build because it's my first foray into the CICD world(loving it so far), and I wanted to work with something GCP native to avoid giving permissions to other SaaS tools like CircleCI and Travis CI.
I really like it because it's free for the first 120 minutes, and it's one of the few CICD tools that enterprises are open to using since it's contained within GCP.
One of the unique things is that it has the Kaniko cache, which speeds up builds by creating intermediate layers within the docker image vs. pushing the full thing from the start. Helpful when you're installing just a few additional dependencies.
Feel free to checkout an example: Cloudbuild Example
I use Travis CI because of various reasons - 1. Cloud based system so no dedicated server required, and you do not need to administrate it. 2. Easy YAML configuration. 3. Supports Major Programming Languages. 4. Support of build matrix 6. Supports AWS, Azure, Docker, Heroku, Google Cloud, Github Pages, PyPi and lot more. 7. Slack Notifications.
You are probably looking at another hosted solution: Jenkins is a good tool but it way too work intensive to be used as just a backup solution.
I have good experience with Circle-CI, Codeship, Drone.io and Travis (as well as problematic experiences with all of them), but my go-to tool is Gitlab CI: simple, powerful and if you have problems with their limitations or pricing, you can always install runners somewhere and use Gitlab just for scheduling and management. Even if you don't host your git repository at Gitlab, you can have Gitlab pull changes automatically from wherever you repo lives.
If you are considering Jenkins I would recommend at least checking out Buildkite. The agents are self-hosted (like Jenkins) but the interface is hosted for you. It meshes up some of the things I like about hosted services (pipeline definitions in YAML, managed interface and authentication) with things I like about Jenkins (local customizable agent images, secrets only on own instances, custom agent level scripts, sizing instances to your needs).
Jenkins is a friend of mine. 😀
There are not much space for Jenkins competitors for now from my point of view. With declarative pipelines now in place, its super easy to maintain them and create new ones(altho I prefer scripted still). Self-hosted, free, huge community makes it the top choice so honestly for me it was an easy pick.
When choosing a tool to help automate our CI/CD, the decision came down to GitHub Actions (GA) or TravisCI. Both are great, but the team has more experience with GA. Given GAs broad support of languages and workflows, it's hard to go wrong with this decision. We will also be using GitHub for version control and project management, so having everything in one place is convenient.
My website is brand new and one of the few requirements of testings I had to implement was code coverage. Never though it was so hard to implement using a #docker container.
Given my lack of experience, every attempt I tried on making a simple code coverage test using the 4 combinations of #TravisCI, #CircleCi with #Coveralls, #Codecov I failed. The main problem was I was generating the .coverage file within the docker container and couldn't access it with #TravisCi or #CircleCi, every attempt to solve this problem seems to be very hacky and this was not the kind of complexity I want to introduce to my newborn website.
This problem was solved using a specific action for #GitHubActions, it was a 3 line solution I had to put in my github workflow file and I was able to access the .coverage file from my docker container and get the coverage report with #Codecov.
We were long time users of TravisCI, but switched to CircleCI because of the better user interface and pricing. Version 2.0 has had a couple of trips and hiccups; but overall we've been very happy with the continuous integration it provides. Continuous Integration is a must-have for building software, and CircleCI continues to surprise as they roll out ideas and features. It's leading the industry in terms of innovation and new ideas, and it's exciting to see what new things they keep rolling out.
Jenkins is a pretty flexible, complete tool. Especially I love the possibility to configure jobs as a code with Jenkins pipelines.
CircleCI is well suited for small projects where the main task is to run continuous integration as quickly as possible. Travis CI is recommended primarily for open-source projects that need to be tested in different environments.
And for something a bit larger I prefer to use Jenkins because it is possible to make serious system configuration thereby different plugins. In Jenkins, I can change almost anything. But if you want to start the CI chain as soon as possible, Jenkins may not be the right choice.
Pros of Appveyor
- Github integration20
- Simple, reliable & powerful18
- Hosted12
- YML-based configuration11
- Nuget support10
- Windows support6
- Free for open source4
- Automatic deployment4
- Great product, responsive people, free for open-source3
- Easy PowerShell support2
- Easy handling of secret keys2
- Remote Desktop into Build Worker1
- Advanced build workers available1
Pros of Travis CI
- Github integration506
- Free for open source388
- Easy to get started271
- Nice interface191
- Automatic deployment162
- Tutorials for each programming language72
- Friendly folks40
- Support for multiple ruby versions29
- Osx support28
- Easy handling of secret keys24
- Fast builds6
- Support for students4
- The best tool for Open Source CI3
- Hosted3
- Build Matrices3
- Github Pull Request build2
- Straightforward Github/Coveralls integration2
- Easy of Usage2
- Integrates with everything2
- Caching resolved artifacts1
- Docker support1
- Great Documentation1
- Build matrix1
- No-brainer for CI1
- Debug build workflow1
- Ubuntu trusty is not supported1
- Free for students1
- Configuration saved with project repository1
- Multi-threaded run1
- Hipchat Integration1
- Perfect0
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Cons of Appveyor
- Complex user interface1
- Poor documentation1
Cons of Travis CI
- Can't be hosted insternally8
- Feature lacking3
- Unstable3
- Incomplete documentation for all platforms2
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