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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Continuous Integration
  4. Continuous Integration
  5. GitLab CI vs Travis CI

GitLab CI vs Travis CI

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Travis CI
Travis CI
Stacks28.0K
Followers6.7K
Votes1.7K
GitLab CI
GitLab CI
Stacks2.3K
Followers1.6K
Votes75
GitHub Stars0
Forks0

GitLab CI vs Travis CI: What are the differences?

GitLab CI vs Travis CI

GitLab CI and Travis CI are both popular Continuous Integration (CI) tools that help automate the process of building, testing, and deploying software applications. While they share similarities, there are several key differences between GitLab CI and Travis CI.

  1. Scalability: GitLab CI provides native support for scaling horizontally, allowing you to distribute the workload across multiple machines or even multiple instances. On the other hand, Travis CI relies on dedicated infrastructure and doesn't have built-in scalability features.

  2. Integration: GitLab CI is tightly integrated with GitLab, a complete DevOps platform, making it easier to manage your source code, issues, and CI/CD pipelines in one place. Travis CI, on the other hand, is standalone and can be used with any version control system.

  3. Containerization: GitLab CI supports Docker containers, enabling you to build and run your pipelines within isolated environments. Travis CI provides limited support for containers but is more focused on virtual machines.

  4. Configuration: GitLab CI uses a YAML-based configuration file (.gitlab-ci.yml) that allows for greater flexibility and control over pipeline stages, variables, and jobs. Travis CI also uses YAML configuration (.travis.yml) but with a slightly different syntax and configuration options.

  5. Shared Runners: GitLab CI offers shared runners, which are virtual machines that can be used by multiple projects, reducing the need for maintaining dedicated infrastructure. Travis CI, on the other hand, primarily relies on dedicated runner instances.

  6. Pricing: GitLab CI offers both a free Community Edition and a paid Enterprise Edition with additional features and support. Travis CI also has a free tier for open-source projects but charges for private repositories and additional build concurrency.

In summary, GitLab CI provides better scalability, tighter integration with GitLab, and more advanced containerization capabilities compared to Travis CI. Additionally, GitLab CI offers greater flexibility in configuration, shared runners for efficient resource utilization, and different pricing options for diverse needs.

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Advice on Travis CI, GitLab CI

Felipe
Felipe

May 24, 2020

Needs advice

My website is brand new and one of the few requirements of testings I had to implement was code coverage. Never though it was so hard to implement using a #docker container.
Given my lack of experience, every attempt I tried on making a simple code coverage test using the 4 combinations of #TravisCI, #CircleCi with #Coveralls, #Codecov I failed. The main problem was I was generating the .coverage file within the docker container and couldn't access it with #TravisCi or #CircleCi, every attempt to solve this problem seems to be very hacky and this was not the kind of complexity I want to introduce to my newborn website.
This problem was solved using a specific action for #GitHubActions, it was a 3 line solution I had to put in my github workflow file and I was able to access the .coverage file from my docker container and get the coverage report with #Codecov.

198k views198k
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?"

529k views529k
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

Travis CI
Travis CI
GitLab CI
GitLab 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.

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 Setup- Getting started with Travis CI is as easy as enabling a project, adding basic build instructions to your project and committing code.;Supports Your Platform- Lots of databases and services are pre-installed and can simply be enabled in your build configuration, we'll launch them for you automatically. MySQL, PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch, Redis, Riak, RabbitMQ, Memcached are available by default.;Deploy With Confidence- Deploying to production after a successful build is as easy as setting up a bit of configuration, and we'll deploy your code to Heroku, Engine Yard Cloud, Nodejitsu, cloudControl, OpenShift, and CloudFoundry.
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
0
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
0
Stacks
28.0K
Stacks
2.3K
Followers
6.7K
Followers
1.6K
Votes
1.7K
Votes
75
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 506
    Github integration
  • 388
    Free for open source
  • 271
    Easy to get started
  • 191
    Nice interface
  • 162
    Automatic deployment
Cons
  • 8
    Can't be hosted insternally
  • 3
    Feature lacking
  • 3
    Unstable
  • 2
    Incomplete documentation for all platforms
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
    Free and open source
Cons
  • 2
    Works best with GitLab repositories
Integrations
Amazon S3
Amazon S3
Heroku
Heroku
AWS CodeDeploy
AWS CodeDeploy
MySQL
MySQL
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Nodejitsu
Nodejitsu
npm
npm
GitHub
GitHub
Engine Yard Cloud
Engine Yard Cloud
cloudControl
cloudControl
GitLab
GitLab

What are some alternatives to Travis CI, GitLab CI?

Jenkins

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.

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.

GoCD

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.

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.

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