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Azure Pipelines vs GitLab CI: What are the differences?
Comparison: Azure Pipelines vs GitLab CI
Azure Pipelines and GitLab CI are two popular continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) tools that provide developers with the ability to automate the building, testing, and deployment of software applications. While both tools share some similarities, there are key differences that set them apart.
Integration with Platform: Azure Pipelines is a cloud-based service provided by Microsoft, tightly integrated with their Azure platform. It offers seamless integration with other Azure services and provides native support for building, testing, and deploying applications on Azure. On the other hand, GitLab CI is a part of the GitLab platform, an end-to-end DevOps platform with built-in source code management, issue tracking, and more. GitLab CI can be self-hosted, providing flexibility for organizations that prefer to keep their infrastructure on-premises or hosted in other cloud providers.
Language and Platform Support: Azure Pipelines supports a wide range of programming languages and platforms including .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, and more. It also provides extensions to integrate with popular development tools like Visual Studio and Jenkins. GitLab CI, being a part of the GitLab platform, supports multiple programming languages and platforms as well. However, it may require additional configuration and setup for specific languages or platforms not directly supported by GitLab CI.
Automation and Orchestration: Azure Pipelines provides a visual interface for creating and managing pipelines using a YAML-based syntax. It offers built-in capabilities for parallel and sequential steps, variable management, and approvals. GitLab CI also uses a YAML-based configuration file called
.gitlab-ci.ymlto define pipelines. It provides similar capabilities for defining stages, jobs, and variables. However, GitLab CI also offers advanced features like manual and scheduled pipelines, allowing users to trigger pipelines manually or on a schedule.Scalability and Pricing: Azure Pipelines offers a generous free tier that allows for unlimited build minutes and 1,800 minutes per month of free deployment time. Additional build minutes and deployment time can be purchased as needed. GitLab CI, on the other hand, offers a free tier with limited resources and functionality. For larger organizations with demanding CI/CD needs, GitLab CI provides paid plans with higher resource limits and additional features. These plans come with a per-user pricing model, which may be more cost-effective for certain organizations.
Ease of Use and User Interface: Azure Pipelines provides a user-friendly web-based interface that makes it easy to create, manage, and monitor pipelines. It offers a powerful visual pipeline editor that enables users to design pipelines visually without writing YAML code. GitLab CI also provides a web-based interface for managing pipelines. However, the interface may feel less intuitive compared to Azure Pipelines, as it requires users to manage pipelines through code in the
.gitlab-ci.ymlfile.Third-Party Integrations: Azure Pipelines has a wide range of integrations with popular third-party tools and services. It offers extensions for integrating with code repositories like GitHub and Bitbucket, as well as with testing and deployment tools like SonarCloud and Azure Kubernetes Service. GitLab CI also offers integrations with various tools and services. However, it may not have the same breadth of integrations as Azure Pipelines, especially when it comes to integrating with non-GitLab products and services.
In summary, Azure Pipelines and GitLab CI both provide powerful CI/CD capabilities, but differ in their platform integration, language support, automation features, scalability, pricing model, ease of use, and third-party integrations. Organizations should evaluate their specific requirements and preferences to choose the tool that best fits their needs.
We are currently using Azure Pipelines for continous integration. Our applications are developed witn .NET framework. But when we look at the online Jenkins is the most widely used tool for continous integration. Can you please give me the advice which one is best to use for my case Azure pipeline or jenkins.
If your source code is on GitHub, also take a look at Github actions. https://github.com/features/actions
We are a mid-size startup running Scala apps. Moving from Jenkins/EC2 to Spinnaker/EKS and looking for a tool to cover our CI/CD needs. Our code lives on GitHub, artifacts in nexus, images in ECR.
Drone is out, GitHub actions are being considered along with Circle CI and GitLab CI.
We primarily need:
- Fast SBT builds (caching)
- Low maintenance overhead (ideally serverless)
- Everything as code
- Ease of use
I think I've tried most of the CI tools out there at some point. It took me a while to get around to Buildkite because at first I didn't see much point given it seemed like you had to run the agent yourself. Eventually it dawned on me why this approach was more ingenious than I realised:
Running my app in a production (or production-like) environment was already a solved problem, because everything was already in some form of "everything as code". Having a test environment where the only difference was adding the Buildkite agent was a trivial addition.
It means that dev/test/prod parity is simple to achieve and maintain. It's also proven to be much easier to support than trying to deal with the problems that come with trying to force an app to fit into the nuances and constraints that are imposed by the containers/runtime of a CI service. When you completely control all of the environment the tests are running in you define those constraints too. It's been a great balance between a managed service and the flexibility of running it yourself.
And while none of my needs have hit the scale of Shopify (I saw one of their engineers speak about it at a conference once, I can't find the video now though 😞) it's good to know I can scale out my worker nodes to hundreds of thousands of workers to reduce the time it takes for my tests to run.
I would recommend you to consider the JFrog Platform that includes JFrog Pipelines - it will allow you to manage the full artifact life cycle for your sbt, docker and other technologies, and automate all of your CI and CD using cloud native declarative yaml pipelines. Will integrate smoothly with all your other toolset.
more configurable to setup ci/cd: * It can provide caching when build sbt, just add this section to yml file * Easy to use, many documentation
Weakness: * Need use gitlab as repository to bring more powerful configuration
Buddy is one of the most easy-to-use tools for CI I ever met. When I needed to set up the pipeline I was really impressed with how easy it is to create it with Buddy with only a few moments. It's literally like: 1. Add repo 2. Click - Click - Click 3. You're done and your app is on prod :D The top feature that I've found is a simple integration with different notification channels - not only Slack (which is the one by default), but Telegram and Discord. The support is also neat - guys respond pretty quickly on even a small issue.
Pros of Azure Pipelines
- Easy to get started4
- Unlimited CI/CD minutes3
- Built by Microsoft3
- Yaml support2
- Docker support2
Pros of GitLab CI
- Robust CI with awesome Docker support22
- Simple configuration13
- All in one solution9
- Source Control and CI in one place7
- Integrated with VCS on commit5
- Free and open source5
- Easy to configure own build server i.e. GitLab-Runner5
- Hosted internally2
- Built-in Docker Registry1
- Built-in support of Review Apps1
- Pipeline could be started manually1
- Enable or disable pipeline by using env variables1
- Gitlab templates could be shared across logical group1
- Easy to setup the dedicated runner to particular job1
- Built-in support of Kubernetes1
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Cons of Azure Pipelines
Cons of GitLab CI
- Works best with GitLab repositories2
