Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
GitHub vs Octopus Deploy: What are the differences?
Introduction
GitHub and Octopus Deploy are two popular tools used in software development and deployment processes. While both tools serve different purposes, there are notable differences between them.
Integration and Collaboration: GitHub is primarily a version control system that enables developers to collaborate on code repositories. It provides a platform for hosting and managing source code, facilitating collaboration through features like pull requests, code reviews, and issue tracking. On the other hand, Octopus Deploy focuses on automating and orchestrating deployment processes, providing release management capabilities and integrating with various tools for seamless deployment.
Deployment Target: GitHub targets developers and teams working on code, allowing them to manage code repositories, track changes, and collaborate efficiently. In contrast, Octopus Deploy is designed for deployment engineers and DevOps teams responsible for automating and managing the deployment of software applications to various environments.
Continuous Integration and Delivery: While GitHub provides some basic support for continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) with workflows and actions, it primarily focuses on version control. Octopus Deploy, on the other hand, is specifically built for CI/CD pipelines, offering advanced release management, deployment orchestration, and integration with popular CI/CD tools like Jenkins, TeamCity, and Azure DevOps.
Deployment Automation: Octopus Deploy offers a wide range of deployment automation capabilities, such as environment-specific configuration files, variable substitution, infrastructure provisioning, and deployment step templates. GitHub lacks built-in deployment orchestration features, focusing more on source code management and collaboration.
Visibility and Auditability: Octopus Deploy provides detailed insights into the deployment process, offering visibility into deployment status, logs, and audit trails. It allows for tracking changes made during deployments and provides reports for compliance purposes. GitHub, while offering some degree of visibility through commit history and pull requests, does not provide the same level of deployment-specific visibility and auditability.
Community and Ecosystem: GitHub has a thriving community of developers and open-source projects, making it a popular choice for collaboration and contributions. It offers extensive integration capabilities with various development tools and services. Octopus Deploy, while having a smaller community compared to GitHub, has a strong focus on deployment processes and provides integrations with several deployment-related tools and services.
In summary, GitHub is primarily focused on code collaboration and version control, while Octopus Deploy is aimed at automating deployment processes and facilitating release management. They serve different purposes in the software development and deployment lifecycle.
I first used BitBucket because it had private repo's, and it didn't disappoint me. Also with the smooth integration of Jira, the decision to use BitBucket as a full application maintenance service was as easy as 1, 2, 3.
I honestly love BitBucket, by the looks, by the UI, and the smooth integration with Tower.
Do you review your Pull/Merge Request before assigning Reviewers?
If you work in a team opening a Pull Request (or Merge Request) looks appropriate. However, have you ever thought about opening a Pull/Merge Request when working by yourself? Here's a checklist of things you can review in your own:
- Pick the correct target branch
- Make Drafts explicit
- Name things properly
- Ask help for tools
- Remove the noise
- Fetch necessary data
- Understand Mergeability
- Pass the message
- Add screenshots
- Be found in the future
- Comment inline in your changes
Read the blog post for more detailed explanation for each item :D
What else do you review before asking for code review?
Using an inclusive language is crucial for fostering a diverse culture. Git has changed the naming conventions to be more language-inclusive, and so you should change. Our development tools, like GitHub and GitLab, already supports the change.
SourceLevel deals very nicely with repositories that changed the master branch to a more appropriate word. Besides, you can use the grep linter the look for exclusive terms contained in the source code.
As the inclusive language gap may happen in other aspects of our lives, have you already thought about them?
One of the magic tricks git performs is the ability to rewrite log history. You can do it in many ways, but git rebase -i
is the one I most use. With this command, It’s possible to switch commits order, remove a commit, squash two or more commits, or edit, for instance.
It’s particularly useful to run it before opening a pull request. It allows developers to “clean up” the mess and organize commits before submitting to review. If you follow the practice 3 and 4, then the list of commits should look very similar to a task list. It should reveal the rationale you had, telling the story of how you end up with that final code.
Out of most of the VCS solutions out there, we found Gitlab was the most feature complete with a free community edition. Their DevSecops offering is also a very robust solution. Gitlab CI/CD was quite easy to setup and the direct integration with your VCS + CI/CD is also a bonus. Out of the box integration with major cloud providers, alerting through instant messages etc. are all extremely convenient. We push our CI/CD updates to MS Teams.
Gitlab as A LOT of features that GitHub and Azure DevOps are missing. Even if both GH and Azure are backed by Microsoft, GitLab being open source has a faster upgrade rate and the hosted by gitlab.com solution seems more appealing than anything else! Quick win: the UI is way better and the Pipeline is way easier to setup on GitLab!
At DeployPlace we use self-hosted GitLab, we have chosen GitLab as most of us are familiar with it. We are happy with all features GitLab provides, I can’t imagine our life without integrated GitLab CI. Another important feature for us is integrated code review tool, we use it every day, we use merge requests, code reviews, branching. To be honest, most of us have GitHub accounts as well, we like to contribute in open source, and we want to be a part of the tech community, but lack of solutions from GitHub in the area of CI doesn’t let us chose it for our projects.
Pros of GitHub
- Open source friendly1.8K
- Easy source control1.5K
- Nice UI1.3K
- Great for team collaboration1.1K
- Easy setup868
- Issue tracker504
- Great community488
- Remote team collaboration483
- Great way to share449
- Pull request and features planning442
- Just works147
- Integrated in many tools132
- Free Public Repos122
- Github Gists116
- Github pages114
- Easy to find repos83
- Open source62
- Easy to find projects60
- It's free60
- Network effect56
- Extensive API49
- Organizations43
- Branching42
- Developer Profiles34
- Git Powered Wikis32
- Great for collaboration30
- It's fun24
- Clean interface and good integrations23
- Community SDK involvement22
- Learn from others source code20
- Because: Git16
- It integrates directly with Azure14
- Standard in Open Source collab10
- Newsfeed10
- Fast8
- Beautiful user experience8
- It integrates directly with Hipchat8
- Easy to discover new code libraries7
- It's awesome6
- Smooth integration6
- Cloud SCM6
- Nice API6
- Graphs6
- Integrations6
- Hands down best online Git service available5
- Reliable5
- Quick Onboarding5
- CI Integration5
- Remarkable uptime5
- Security options4
- Loved by developers4
- Uses GIT4
- Free HTML hosting4
- Easy to use and collaborate with others4
- Version Control4
- Simple but powerful4
- Unlimited Public Repos at no cost4
- Nice to use3
- IAM3
- Ci3
- Easy deployment via SSH3
- Free private repos2
- Good tools support2
- All in one development service2
- Never dethroned2
- Easy source control and everything is backed up2
- Issues tracker2
- Self Hosted2
- IAM integration2
- Very Easy to Use2
- Easy to use2
- Leads the copycats2
- Free HTML hostings2
- Easy and efficient maintainance of the projects2
- Beautiful2
- Dasf1
- Profound1
Pros of Octopus Deploy
- Powerful30
- Simplicity25
- Easy to learn20
- .Net oriented17
- Easy to manage releases and rollback14
- Allows multitenancy8
- Nice interface4
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of GitHub
- Owned by micrcosoft56
- Expensive for lone developers that want private repos38
- Relatively slow product/feature release cadence15
- API scoping could be better10
- Only 3 collaborators for private repos9
- Limited featureset for issue management4
- Does not have a graph for showing history like git lens3
- GitHub Packages does not support SNAPSHOT versions2
- Expensive1
- No multilingual interface1
- Horrible review comments tracking (absence)1
- Takes a long time to commit1
Cons of Octopus Deploy
- Poor UI4
- Config & variables not versioned (e.g. in git)2
- Management of Config2