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Buildbot vs Jenkins: What are the differences?

Introduction

Buildbot and Jenkins are both popular continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) tools used in software development. While both tools serve the same purpose, they have some key differences that set them apart. This article will highlight six specific differences between Buildbot and Jenkins.

  1. Configuration: One key difference between Buildbot and Jenkins lies in their configuration. Buildbot uses a Python-based configuration system, where users define the build steps and workflows using Python code. On the other hand, Jenkins utilizes a web-based user interface for configuration, allowing users to define and customize their build processes using a graphical interface. This difference in configuration approach provides flexibility and power to developers using Buildbot, while offering a more user-friendly experience for those using Jenkins.

  2. Scalability: Buildbot and Jenkins differ in terms of scalability. Buildbot is highly scalable and can handle a large number of concurrent builds and nodes. It is designed to distribute builds across multiple slaves, allowing for efficient use of resources. Jenkins, on the other hand, may encounter scalability issues when dealing with a high number of builds or nodes. While Jenkins has plugins that enhance its scalability, Buildbot inherently provides better scalability out of the box.

  3. Customizability: Buildbot and Jenkins also vary in terms of customizability. Buildbot offers extensive customization options, empowering users to fine-tune every aspect of the build process according to their requirements. Users have complete control over the build environment, allowing for more customized and sophisticated workflows. Jenkins, although customizable to some extent, may not provide the same level of flexibility and control as Buildbot.

  4. Job Dependencies: Another difference between Buildbot and Jenkins is how they handle job dependencies. Buildbot has built-in support for defining and managing job dependencies, ensuring proper order and coordination between jobs. This is crucial for complex build pipelines. Jenkins, on the other hand, relies more on plugins for managing job dependencies, making it slightly less straightforward compared to Buildbot.

  5. Community and Ecosystem: Both Buildbot and Jenkins have active communities and a wide range of plugins and extensions. However, Jenkins, being a more popular tool, has a larger and more active user community. This translates into a larger ecosystem of plugins and integrations, providing users with a broader selection of options and resources. Buildbot, while having a smaller community, still offers a sufficient number of plugins and extensions for most use cases.

  6. Ease of Installation: The installation process for Buildbot and Jenkins also differs. Buildbot installation requires more manual configuration and setup, especially for complex configurations. Jenkins, on the other hand, offers a simpler installation process with pre-packaged distributions available for various platforms. This makes Jenkins more beginner-friendly and easier to get started with.

In Summary, Buildbot takes a code-centric approach with high scalability, extensive customization options, and built-in support for job dependencies, while Jenkins utilizes a user-friendly web interface, has a larger community and ecosystem, and offers easier installation.

Advice on Buildbot and Jenkins
Needs advice
on
Azure PipelinesAzure Pipelines
and
JenkinsJenkins

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.

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Replies (1)
Recommends
on
GitHubGitHub

If your source code is on GitHub, also take a look at Github actions. https://github.com/features/actions

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Mohammad Hossein Amri
Chief Technology Officer at Planally · | 3 upvotes · 518.3K views
Needs advice
on
GoCDGoCD
and
JenkinsJenkins

I'm open to anything. just want something that break less and doesn't need me to pay for it, and can be hosted on Docker. our scripting language is powershell core. so it's better to support it. also we are building dotnet core in our pipeline, so if they have anything related that helps with the CI would be nice.

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Replies (1)
Ankit Malik
Software Developer at CloudCover · | 1 upvotes · 501K views
Recommends
on
Google Cloud BuildGoogle Cloud Build

Google cloud build can help you. It is hosted on cloud and also provide reasonable free quota.

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Needs advice
on
ConcourseConcourse
and
JenkinsJenkins

I'm planning to setup complete CD-CD setup for spark and python application which we are going to deploy in aws lambda and EMR Cluster. Which tool would be best one to choose. Since my company is trying to adopt to concourse i would like to understand what are the lack of capabilities concourse have . Thanks in advance !

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Replies (1)
Maxi Krone
Cloud Engineer at fme AG · | 2 upvotes · 420.2K views
Recommends
on
ConcourseConcourse

I would definetly recommend Concourse to you, as it is one of the most advanced modern methods of making CI/CD while Jenkins is an old monolithic dinosaur. Concourse itself is cloudnative and containerbased which helps you to build simple, high-performance and scalable CI/CD pipelines. In my opinion, the only lack of skills you have with Concourse is your own knowledge of how to build pipelines and automate things. Technincally there is no lack, i would even say you can extend it way more easily. But as a Con it is more easy to interact with Jenkins if you are only used to UIs. Concourse needs someone which is capable of using CLIs.

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Needs advice
on
JenkinsJenkinsTravis CITravis CI
and
CircleCICircleCI

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?"

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Replies (6)
Dustin Falgout
Senior Developer at Elegant Themes · | 13 upvotes · 574.7K views

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.

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Peter Thomas
Distinguished Engineer at Intuit · | 9 upvotes · 888.2K views
Recommends
on
Travis CITravis CI
at

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 !

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Recommends
on
Google Cloud BuildGoogle Cloud Build

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

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Recommends
on
Travis CITravis CI

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.

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Oded Arbel
Recommends
on
GitLab CIGitLab CI

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.

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Recommends
on
BuildkiteBuildkite

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).

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Decisions about Buildbot and Jenkins
A Stolze
Engineering Team Lead at DCMN GmbH · | 7 upvotes · 69.1K views

Github Actions allowed us to drop previous CI/CD technologies like Jenkins or AWS CodeBuild. The main advantages for us are: - The Infrastructure-as-Code approach of Github Actions enables us to keep CI/CD configurations next to the code. - Github as a single platform for repositories and CI/CD simplifies our stack and effort to manage it on the daily basis.

TVcloud Team <3 Github Actions

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Pedro Gil Carvalho
Head of Engineering at Lengoo GmbH · | 6 upvotes · 73.2K views

We replaced Jenkins with Github Actions for all our repositories hosted on Github. GA has two significant benefits for us compared to an external build tool: it's simpler, and it sits at eye level.

Its simplicity and smooth user experience makes it easier for all developers to adopt, giving them more autonomy.

Sitting at eye level means it's completely run and configured right alongside the code, so that it's easier to observe and adjust our builds as we go.

These two benefits have made "the build" less of a system engineer responsibility and more of a developer tool, giving developers more ownership from code to release.

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Kirill Mikhailov

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.

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Stephen Badger | Vital Beats
Senior DevOps Engineer at Vital Beats · | 2 upvotes · 228.6K views

Within our deployment pipeline, we have a need to deploy to multiple customer environments, and manage secrets specifically in a way that integrates well with AWS, Kubernetes Secrets, Terraform and our pipelines ourselves.

Jenkins offered us the ability to choose one of a number of credentials/secrets management approaches, and models secrets as a more dynamic concept that GitHub Actions provided.

Additionally, we are operating Jenkins within our development Kubernetes cluster as a kind of system-wide orchestrator, allowing us to use Kubernetes pods as build agents, avoiding the ongoing direct costs associated with GitHub Actions minutes / per-user pricing. Obviously as a consequence we take on the indirect costs of maintain Jenkins itself, patching it, upgrading etc. However our experience with managing Jenkins via Kubernetes and declarative Jenkins configuration has led us to believe that this cost is small, particularly as the majority of actual building and testing is handled inside docker containers and Kubernetes, alleviating the need for less supported plugins that may make Jenkins administration more difficult.

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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.

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