Github Actions vs Zuul CI

Overview

GitHub Actions

Stacks48.2K

Followers3.1K

Votes27

Zuul CI

Stacks5

Followers21

Votes3

Github Actions vs Zuul CI: What are the differences?

Introduction:

GitHub Actions and Zuul CI are two popular continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) tools used in software development. While they both serve the purpose of automating build, test, and deployment processes, there are key differences between the two.

Scalability and Flexibility: GitHub Actions allow for easy customization and scalability, as it provides a wide range of pre-built actions and enables users to create their own custom actions. Additionally, GitHub Actions can be integrated with various third-party services and tools, making it more flexible in terms of functionality. On the other hand, Zuul CI is designed to mainly focus on gating changes and managing code review process, making it more suitable for large-scale projects with a need for strict code review and gating policies.
Integration with GitHub: GitHub Actions is tightly integrated with the GitHub platform, allowing developers to easily trigger workflows based on specific events within GitHub repositories. This integration provides seamless access to the repository's codebase, pull requests, and issue tracking, making it convenient for developers already using GitHub for their version control. In contrast, Zuul CI is not inherently tied to GitHub and can be used with other version control systems as well.
Workflow Configuration: GitHub Actions provides a simple YAML-based configuration format for defining workflows, making it easy for developers to create and manage their CI/CD pipelines. The configuration files can be easily stored alongside the code in the repository, maintaining visibility and version control. Zuul CI, on the other hand, uses a more complex configuration system called zuul.d, which involves separate configuration files and projects. This approach offers more advanced configuration options and the ability to manage complex pipelines but may require more setup and maintenance.
Ecosystem and Community Support: GitHub Actions has a large and active community, with a wide range of community-maintained actions and templates available for various use cases. This extensive ecosystem makes it easier to find and reuse existing actions, reducing the need for building custom workflows from scratch. Zuul CI, while it has its own community and ecosystem, may have a more limited range of pre-built integrations and actions available.
Testing and Debugging: GitHub Actions provides a rich set of features for testing and debugging workflows, including the ability to run actions locally, view logs, and re-run workflows for specific commits. This makes it easier to identify and fix issues in the CI/CD pipeline. Zuul CI also supports similar debugging capabilities but may require more manual setup and configuration.
Pricing Model: GitHub Actions offers a generous free tier for public repositories and a certain amount of free minutes for private repositories, providing cost-effective options for small to medium-sized projects. For larger projects, additional minutes can be purchased. Zuul CI, being an open-source project, is free to use with no usage-based costs. However, it may require more infrastructure and maintenance costs depending on the scale and complexity of the project.

In Summary, GitHub Actions provides more scalability, flexibility, and integration with GitHub, while Zuul CI focuses on strict code review processes and advanced configuration options. Both tools have their own strengths and are suitable for different use cases and project requirements.

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Advice on GitHub Actions, Zuul CI

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

GitHub Actions	Zuul CI
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.	It is an open source CI/CD platform specializing in gating changes across multiple systems and applications before landing a single patch.
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	Project Gating;CI/CD with Ansible;Cross-Project Dependencies
Statistics
Stacks 48.2K	Stacks 5
Followers 3.1K	Followers 21
Votes 27	Votes 3
Pros & Cons
Pros 8 Integration with GitHub 5 Free 3 Ready actions in Marketplace 3 Easy to duplicate a workflow 2 Docker Support Cons 5 Lacking [skip ci] 4 Lacking allow failure 3 Lacking job specific badges 2 No ssh login to servers 1 No manual launch	Pros 1 Hard to configure 1 Open-source Mostly used with Openstack 1 No vendor-lock In. Zero Cost
Integrations
GitHub	Zookeeper

What are some alternatives to GitHub Actions, Zuul CI?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Drone.io

Drone is a hosted continuous integration service. It enables you to conveniently set up projects to automatically build, test, and deploy as you make changes to your code. Drone integrates seamlessly with Github, Bitbucket and Google Code as well as third party services such as Heroku, Dotcloud, Google AppEngine and more.

wercker

Wercker is a CI/CD developer automation platform designed for Microservices & Container Architecture.

GoCD

GoCD is an open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks. GoCD offers business a first-class build and deployment engine for complete control and visibility.

Airflow

Use Airflow to author workflows as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) of tasks. The Airflow scheduler executes your tasks on an array of workers while following the specified dependencies. Rich command lines utilities makes performing complex surgeries on DAGs a snap. The rich user interface makes it easy to visualize pipelines running in production, monitor progress and troubleshoot issues when needed.

Shippable

Shippable is a SaaS platform that lets you easily add Continuous Integration/Deployment to your Github and BitBucket repositories. It is lightweight, super simple to setup, and runs your builds and tests faster than any other service.

Related Comparisons

Github Actions vs Zuul CI: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Scalability and Flexibility: GitHub Actions allow for easy customization and scalability, as it provides a wide range of pre-built actions and enables users to create their own custom actions. Additionally, GitHub Actions can be integrated with various third-party services and tools, making it more flexible in terms of functionality. On the other hand, Zuul CI is designed to mainly focus on gating changes and managing code review process, making it more suitable for large-scale projects with a need for strict code review and gating policies.
Integration with GitHub: GitHub Actions is tightly integrated with the GitHub platform, allowing developers to easily trigger workflows based on specific events within GitHub repositories. This integration provides seamless access to the repository's codebase, pull requests, and issue tracking, making it convenient for developers already using GitHub for their version control. In contrast, Zuul CI is not inherently tied to GitHub and can be used with other version control systems as well.
Workflow Configuration: GitHub Actions provides a simple YAML-based configuration format for defining workflows, making it easy for developers to create and manage their CI/CD pipelines. The configuration files can be easily stored alongside the code in the repository, maintaining visibility and version control. Zuul CI, on the other hand, uses a more complex configuration system called zuul.d, which involves separate configuration files and projects. This approach offers more advanced configuration options and the ability to manage complex pipelines but may require more setup and maintenance.
Ecosystem and Community Support: GitHub Actions has a large and active community, with a wide range of community-maintained actions and templates available for various use cases. This extensive ecosystem makes it easier to find and reuse existing actions, reducing the need for building custom workflows from scratch. Zuul CI, while it has its own community and ecosystem, may have a more limited range of pre-built integrations and actions available.
Testing and Debugging: GitHub Actions provides a rich set of features for testing and debugging workflows, including the ability to run actions locally, view logs, and re-run workflows for specific commits. This makes it easier to identify and fix issues in the CI/CD pipeline. Zuul CI also supports similar debugging capabilities but may require more manual setup and configuration.
Pricing Model: GitHub Actions offers a generous free tier for public repositories and a certain amount of free minutes for private repositories, providing cost-effective options for small to medium-sized projects. For larger projects, additional minutes can be purchased. Zuul CI, being an open-source project, is free to use with no usage-based costs. However, it may require more infrastructure and maintenance costs depending on the scale and complexity of the project.

Github Actions vs Zuul CI

Overview