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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Continuous Integration
  4. Continuous Integration
  5. GitLab CI vs Go.CD vs Jenkins

GitLab CI vs Go.CD vs Jenkins

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Jenkins
Jenkins
Stacks59.2K
Followers50.4K
Votes2.2K
GitHub Stars24.6K
Forks9.2K
GoCD
GoCD
Stacks205
Followers325
Votes207
GitHub Stars7.3K
Forks980
GitLab CI
GitLab CI
Stacks2.3K
Followers1.6K
Votes75
GitHub Stars0
Forks0

GitLab CI vs Go.CD vs Jenkins: What are the differences?

Introduction:

GitLab CI, Go.CD, and Jenkins are popular continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platforms used by development teams to automate the building, testing, and deployment processes of software applications.

  1. Integration with Version Control Systems: GitLab CI is tightly integrated with GitLab, allowing for seamless CI/CD workflows within the same platform. Go.CD supports multiple version control systems, making it versatile for teams using various repositories. Jenkins also supports various version control systems but might require additional plugins for specific integrations.

  2. Ease of Configuration: Jenkins requires manual configuration for each project, making it time-consuming and prone to human error. GitLab CI leverages configuration as code using YAML files, simplifying the setup and maintenance process. Go.CD utilizes a pipeline configuration file, providing a structured and reusable way of defining workflows.

  3. Ease of Scalability: Jenkins may encounter performance issues when scaling to a large number of agents or pipelines due to its architecture. GitLab CI is designed to scale effortlessly by leveraging Docker containers for job execution, ensuring consistent performance under heavy workloads. Go.CD offers elastic agents that dynamically provision resources, allowing for efficient scalability based on demand.

  4. Community Support and Ecosystem: Jenkins has a vast community and extensive plugin ecosystem, providing solutions for various use cases and integrations. Go.CD has a smaller community compared to Jenkins but offers robust support and documentation, focusing on enterprise solutions. GitLab CI benefits from GitLab's community and ecosystem, integrating seamlessly with other GitLab features like issue tracking and code review.

  5. User Interface and User Experience: GitLab CI provides a modern and intuitive user interface, simplifying the CI/CD process for both developers and administrators. Go.CD offers a clean and user-friendly interface with visual pipeline editing capabilities, enhancing the overall user experience. Jenkins, while powerful, has a more dated interface that may require additional plugins for improved usability.

  6. Security and Permissions Management: GitLab CI offers built-in security features such as role-based access control and secure variables, ensuring secure CI/CD pipelines. Go.CD provides robust authentication mechanisms and fine-grained access control settings for secure pipeline execution. Jenkins requires plugin installations for advanced security features like role-based security and credentials management.

In Summary, GitLab CI, Go.CD, and Jenkins differ in their integration with version control systems, ease of configuration, scalability, community support, user experience, and security features. Each platform offers unique advantages and considerations for teams implementing CI/CD pipelines in their software development workflows.

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Advice on Jenkins, GoCD, GitLab CI

Balaramesh
Balaramesh

Apr 20, 2020

Needs adviceonAzure PipelinesAzure Pipelines.NET.NETJenkinsJenkins

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.

663k views663k
Comments
StackShare
StackShare

Apr 17, 2019

Needs advice

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?"

530k views530k
Comments
Tatiana
Tatiana

Nov 16, 2019

Decided

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.

734k views734k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Jenkins
Jenkins
GoCD
GoCD
GitLab CI
GitLab CI

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.

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.

GitLab offers a continuous integration service. If you add a .gitlab-ci.yml file to the root directory of your repository, and configure your GitLab project to use a Runner, then each merge request or push triggers your CI pipeline.

Easy installation;Easy configuration;Change set support;Permanent links;RSS/E-mail/IM Integration;After-the-fact tagging;JUnit/TestNG test reporting;Distributed builds;File fingerprinting;Plugin Support
Model complex workflows with dependency management and parallel execution; Easy to pass once-built binaries between stages; Visibility into your end-to-end workflow. Track a change from commit to deploy at a glance; Manual triggers allow deployment any version at anytime. And it's securable and auditable; Run tests written in most languages or frameworks, provides informative testing report; Compare both files and commit messages across any two arbitrary builds; Eliminate Bottlenecks by providing trivial parallel execution across pipelines, platforms, versions, branches, etc.; Easily reuse pipeline configurations via template system.
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Statistics
GitHub Stars
24.6K
GitHub Stars
7.3K
GitHub Stars
0
GitHub Forks
9.2K
GitHub Forks
980
GitHub Forks
0
Stacks
59.2K
Stacks
205
Stacks
2.3K
Followers
50.4K
Followers
325
Followers
1.6K
Votes
2.2K
Votes
207
Votes
75
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 523
    Hosted internally
  • 469
    Free open source
  • 318
    Great to build, deploy or launch anything async
  • 243
    Tons of integrations
  • 211
    Rich set of plugins with good documentation
Cons
  • 13
    Workarounds needed for basic requirements
  • 10
    Groovy with cumbersome syntax
  • 8
    Plugins compatibility issues
  • 7
    Limited abilities with declarative pipelines
  • 7
    Lack of support
Pros
  • 32
    Open source
  • 27
    Pipeline dependencies
  • 25
    Pipeline structures
  • 22
    Can run jobs in parallel
  • 20
    Very flexible
Cons
  • 2
    Lack of plugins
  • 2
    Horrible ui
  • 1
    No support
Pros
  • 22
    Robust CI with awesome Docker support
  • 13
    Simple configuration
  • 9
    All in one solution
  • 7
    Source Control and CI in one place
  • 5
    Integrated with VCS on commit
Cons
  • 2
    Works best with GitLab repositories
Integrations
No integrations available
Docker
Docker
Kubernetes
Kubernetes
Slack
Slack
GitLab
GitLab

What are some alternatives to Jenkins, GoCD, GitLab CI?

Travis CI

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

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

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

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.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

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

Shippable

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.

Buildkite

Buildkite

CI and build automation tool that combines the power of your own build infrastructure with the convenience of a managed, centralized web UI. Used by Shopify, Basecamp, Digital Ocean, Venmo, Cochlear, Bugsnag and more.

Snap CI

Snap CI

Snap CI is a cloud-based continuous integration & continuous deployment tool with powerful deployment pipelines. Integrates seamlessly with GitHub and provides fast feedback so you can deploy with ease.

Appveyor

Appveyor

AppVeyor aims to give powerful Continuous Integration and Deployment tools to every .NET developer without the hassle of setting up and maintaining their own build server.

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