GitLab vs Jenkins

Overview

Jenkins

Stacks59.2K

Followers50.4K

Votes2.2K

GitHub Stars24.6K

Forks9.2K

GitLab

Stacks63.4K

Followers54.5K

Votes2.5K

GitHub Stars0

Forks0

GitLab vs Jenkins: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between GitLab and Jenkins. Both GitLab and Jenkins are popular tools used in the software development lifecycle, particularly for version control and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD). However, there are several distinct differences between the two.

Cloud vs. Self-hosted: GitLab is a cloud-based platform that offers both a cloud-hosted version and a self-hosted version. On the other hand, Jenkins is a self-hosted tool that needs to be installed and maintained on a server.
Built-in vs. Plugin-based: GitLab provides a complete end-to-end solution in a single platform, with built-in features for version control, CI/CD, issue tracking, and more. Jenkins, on the other hand, is a highly extensible tool that relies on plugins to add functionality for version control, build automation, and other tasks.
Centralized vs. Distributed: GitLab is designed as a centralized repository, where all code and project information is stored in one place. Jenkins, on the other hand, is a distributed tool that allows for multiple build nodes and agents to be set up for executing build tasks.
Code Review vs. Build Automation: While both GitLab and Jenkins support code review and build automation, they differ in their primary focus. GitLab puts a strong emphasis on code review and collaboration, providing features such as merge requests, code comments, and inline suggestions. Jenkins, on the other hand, is primarily focused on build automation and continuous integration, allowing developers to automate the build, test, and deployment processes.
Scalability and Performance: GitLab is known for its scalability and performance, handling large codebases and large numbers of users efficiently. Jenkins, on the other hand, can sometimes face performance issues when dealing with large-scale projects, especially when there are too many simultaneous builds or heavy resource requirements.
User Interface and Ease of Use: GitLab has a user-friendly and intuitive interface, making it easy for developers and team members to navigate and collaborate on projects. Jenkins, on the other hand, has a steeper learning curve and a more technical interface, requiring some technical expertise to set up and configure.

In summary, while both GitLab and Jenkins are powerful tools for version control and CI/CD, GitLab is a cloud-based, centralized, and user-friendly solution with built-in features, while Jenkins is a self-hosted, extensible, distributed tool primarily focused on build automation, with a steeper learning curve and plugin-based functionality.

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Advice on Jenkins, GitLab

Anonymous

May 25, 2020

Decided

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!

624k views624k

Comments

Weverton

CTO at SourceLevel

Jul 22, 2020

Review

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.

1.1M views1.1M

Comments

Kamaleshwar

Software Engineer at Dibiz Pte. Ltd.

Jul 8, 2020

Decided

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.

740k views740k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Jenkins	GitLab
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.	GitLab offers git repository management, code reviews, issue tracking, activity feeds and wikis. Enterprises install GitLab on-premise and connect it with LDAP and Active Directory servers for secure authentication and authorization. A single GitLab server can handle more than 25,000 users but it is also possible to create a high availability setup with multiple active servers.
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	Manage git repositories with fine grained access controls that keep your code secure;Perform code reviews and enhance collaboration with merge requests;Each project can also have an issue tracker and a wiki;Used by more than 100,000 organizations, GitLab is the most popular solution to manage git repositories on-premises;Completely free and open source (MIT Expat license);Powered by Ruby on Rails
Statistics
GitHub Stars 24.6K	GitHub Stars 0
GitHub Forks 9.2K	GitHub Forks 0
Stacks 59.2K	Stacks 63.4K
Followers 50.4K	Followers 54.5K
Votes 2.2K	Votes 2.5K
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 Lack of support 7 Limited abilities with declarative pipelines	Pros 508 Self hosted 431 Free 339 Has community edition 242 Easy setup 240 Familiar interface Cons 28 Slow ui performance 9 Introduce breaking bugs every release 6 Insecure (no published IP list for whitelisting) 2 Built-in Docker Registry 1 Review Apps feature

What are some alternatives to Jenkins, GitLab?

GitHub

GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over three million people use GitHub to build amazing things together.

Bitbucket

Bitbucket gives teams one place to plan projects, collaborate on code, test and deploy, all with free private Git repositories. Teams choose Bitbucket because it has a superior Jira integration, built-in CI/CD, & is free for up to 5 users.

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.

RhodeCode

RhodeCode provides centralized control over distributed code repositories. Developers get code review tools and custom APIs that work in Mercurial, Git & SVN. Firms get unified security and user control so that their CTOs can sleep at night

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.

Related Comparisons

GitLab vs Jenkins: What are the differences?

Introduction

Cloud vs. Self-hosted: GitLab is a cloud-based platform that offers both a cloud-hosted version and a self-hosted version. On the other hand, Jenkins is a self-hosted tool that needs to be installed and maintained on a server.
Built-in vs. Plugin-based: GitLab provides a complete end-to-end solution in a single platform, with built-in features for version control, CI/CD, issue tracking, and more. Jenkins, on the other hand, is a highly extensible tool that relies on plugins to add functionality for version control, build automation, and other tasks.
Centralized vs. Distributed: GitLab is designed as a centralized repository, where all code and project information is stored in one place. Jenkins, on the other hand, is a distributed tool that allows for multiple build nodes and agents to be set up for executing build tasks.
Code Review vs. Build Automation: While both GitLab and Jenkins support code review and build automation, they differ in their primary focus. GitLab puts a strong emphasis on code review and collaboration, providing features such as merge requests, code comments, and inline suggestions. Jenkins, on the other hand, is primarily focused on build automation and continuous integration, allowing developers to automate the build, test, and deployment processes.
Scalability and Performance: GitLab is known for its scalability and performance, handling large codebases and large numbers of users efficiently. Jenkins, on the other hand, can sometimes face performance issues when dealing with large-scale projects, especially when there are too many simultaneous builds or heavy resource requirements.
User Interface and Ease of Use: GitLab has a user-friendly and intuitive interface, making it easy for developers and team members to navigate and collaborate on projects. Jenkins, on the other hand, has a steeper learning curve and a more technical interface, requiring some technical expertise to set up and configure.

GitLab vs Jenkins

Overview