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Jenkins vs Test Kitchen: What are the differences?
Introduction
Jenkins and Test Kitchen are both popular tools used in the field of software development for continuous integration and testing purposes. However, there are key differences between these two tools that set them apart and make them suitable for different use cases.
Architecture and purpose: Jenkins is primarily a continuous integration and delivery system that helps automate software build, test, and deployment processes. It runs on a Jenkins server and uses a master-agent architecture, where multiple agents can be connected to the master to distribute the workload. On the other hand, Test Kitchen is a tool specifically designed for testing infrastructure code and helps in validating the desired state of infrastructure components specified in configuration management tools like Chef, Puppet, or Ansible.
Configuration management integration: Jenkins integrates well with various configuration management tools, allowing teams to automate the deployment and configuration of servers and applications. It can trigger the execution of configuration management tasks during the build and deployment stages. Test Kitchen, on the other hand, is specifically focused on infrastructure testing and validation, with built-in support for configuration management tools. It provides a platform to test infrastructure code using virtualization providers like Vagrant, Docker, etc., and configuration management tools seamlessly.
Scope and focus: Jenkins is a broad and versatile tool that caters to various aspects of software development and deployment, including building, testing, and deployment across different platforms and technologies. It supports a wide range of plugins and integrations to customize workflows. Test Kitchen, on the other hand, has a narrower focus on the testing and validation of infrastructure code, offering functionalities specific to this domain. It provides a streamlined and focused approach for infrastructure testing.
User interface and ease of use: Jenkins provides a web-based user interface that allows users to configure and manage jobs, track build progress, and view logs and reports. It also supports a plugin ecosystem that extends its functionality. Test Kitchen, on the other hand, is predominantly used from the command line, with a more command-driven approach. It requires users to define configurations in code files and execute tests using command-line commands, making it more suitable for users comfortable with the command-line interface.
Community and support: Jenkins has a large and active community of users and contributors, with a vast number of plugins and extensive documentation available. It is widely adopted and has a significant user base, ensuring constant development and support. Test Kitchen, although not as widely adopted, also has an active community and provides support for various configuration management tools. However, compared to Jenkins, it may have a relatively smaller user base and plugin ecosystem.
Testing capabilities and focus: While both Jenkins and Test Kitchen have testing capabilities, the focus and approach differ. Jenkins provides a platform for running unit tests, integration tests, and other custom tests as part of the build process. It supports various testing frameworks and provides reporting and integration options. Test Kitchen, on the other hand, focuses specifically on infrastructure testing, helping validate the desired state of infrastructure components defined in configuration management tools. It provides a platform to spin up isolated environments and execute tests against them.
In summary, Jenkins is a versatile tool for continuous integration and delivery, supporting a wide range of development and deployment tasks, with a strong focus on automation and extensibility. Test Kitchen, on the other hand, is a specialized tool for infrastructure testing, helping validate infrastructure code using configuration management tools, and offering a streamlined approach for testing and validation in this domain.
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.
If your source code is on GitHub, also take a look at Github actions. https://github.com/features/actions
I'm open to anything. just want something that break less and doesn't need me to pay for it, and can be hosted on Docker. our scripting language is powershell core. so it's better to support it. also we are building dotnet core in our pipeline, so if they have anything related that helps with the CI would be nice.
Google cloud build can help you. It is hosted on cloud and also provide reasonable free quota.
I'm planning to setup complete CD-CD setup for spark and python application which we are going to deploy in aws lambda and EMR Cluster. Which tool would be best one to choose. Since my company is trying to adopt to concourse i would like to understand what are the lack of capabilities concourse have . Thanks in advance !
I would definetly recommend Concourse to you, as it is one of the most advanced modern methods of making CI/CD while Jenkins is an old monolithic dinosaur. Concourse itself is cloudnative and containerbased which helps you to build simple, high-performance and scalable CI/CD pipelines. In my opinion, the only lack of skills you have with Concourse is your own knowledge of how to build pipelines and automate things. Technincally there is no lack, i would even say you can extend it way more easily. But as a Con it is more easy to interact with Jenkins if you are only used to UIs. Concourse needs someone which is capable of using CLIs.
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?"
We use CircleCI because of the better value it provides in its plans. I'm sure we could have used Travis just as easily but we found CircleCI's pricing to be more reasonable. In the two years since we signed up, the service has improved. CircleCI is always innovating and iterating on their platform. We have been very satisfied.
As the maintainer of the Karate DSL open-source project - I found Travis CI very easy to integrate into the GitHub workflow and it has been steady sailing for more than 2 years now ! It works well for Java / Apache Maven projects and we were able to configure it to use the latest Oracle JDK as per our needs. Thanks to the Travis CI team for this service to the open-source community !
I use Google Cloud Build because it's my first foray into the CICD world(loving it so far), and I wanted to work with something GCP native to avoid giving permissions to other SaaS tools like CircleCI and Travis CI.
I really like it because it's free for the first 120 minutes, and it's one of the few CICD tools that enterprises are open to using since it's contained within GCP.
One of the unique things is that it has the Kaniko cache, which speeds up builds by creating intermediate layers within the docker image vs. pushing the full thing from the start. Helpful when you're installing just a few additional dependencies.
Feel free to checkout an example: Cloudbuild Example
I use Travis CI because of various reasons - 1. Cloud based system so no dedicated server required, and you do not need to administrate it. 2. Easy YAML configuration. 3. Supports Major Programming Languages. 4. Support of build matrix 6. Supports AWS, Azure, Docker, Heroku, Google Cloud, Github Pages, PyPi and lot more. 7. Slack Notifications.
You are probably looking at another hosted solution: Jenkins is a good tool but it way too work intensive to be used as just a backup solution.
I have good experience with Circle-CI, Codeship, Drone.io and Travis (as well as problematic experiences with all of them), but my go-to tool is Gitlab CI: simple, powerful and if you have problems with their limitations or pricing, you can always install runners somewhere and use Gitlab just for scheduling and management. Even if you don't host your git repository at Gitlab, you can have Gitlab pull changes automatically from wherever you repo lives.
If you are considering Jenkins I would recommend at least checking out Buildkite. The agents are self-hosted (like Jenkins) but the interface is hosted for you. It meshes up some of the things I like about hosted services (pipeline definitions in YAML, managed interface and authentication) with things I like about Jenkins (local customizable agent images, secrets only on own instances, custom agent level scripts, sizing instances to your needs).
Github Actions allowed us to drop previous CI/CD technologies like Jenkins or AWS CodeBuild. The main advantages for us are: - The Infrastructure-as-Code approach of Github Actions enables us to keep CI/CD configurations next to the code. - Github as a single platform for repositories and CI/CD simplifies our stack and effort to manage it on the daily basis.
TVcloud Team <3 Github Actions
We replaced Jenkins with Github Actions for all our repositories hosted on Github. GA has two significant benefits for us compared to an external build tool: it's simpler, and it sits at eye level.
Its simplicity and smooth user experience makes it easier for all developers to adopt, giving them more autonomy.
Sitting at eye level means it's completely run and configured right alongside the code, so that it's easier to observe and adjust our builds as we go.
These two benefits have made "the build" less of a system engineer responsibility and more of a developer tool, giving developers more ownership from code to release.
Jenkins is a friend of mine. 😀
There are not much space for Jenkins competitors for now from my point of view. With declarative pipelines now in place, its super easy to maintain them and create new ones(altho I prefer scripted still). Self-hosted, free, huge community makes it the top choice so honestly for me it was an easy pick.
Within our deployment pipeline, we have a need to deploy to multiple customer environments, and manage secrets specifically in a way that integrates well with AWS, Kubernetes Secrets, Terraform and our pipelines ourselves.
Jenkins offered us the ability to choose one of a number of credentials/secrets management approaches, and models secrets as a more dynamic concept that GitHub Actions provided.
Additionally, we are operating Jenkins within our development Kubernetes cluster as a kind of system-wide orchestrator, allowing us to use Kubernetes pods as build agents, avoiding the ongoing direct costs associated with GitHub Actions minutes / per-user pricing. Obviously as a consequence we take on the indirect costs of maintain Jenkins itself, patching it, upgrading etc. However our experience with managing Jenkins via Kubernetes and declarative Jenkins configuration has led us to believe that this cost is small, particularly as the majority of actual building and testing is handled inside docker containers and Kubernetes, alleviating the need for less supported plugins that may make Jenkins administration more difficult.
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.
Pros of Jenkins
- Hosted internally523
- Free open source469
- Great to build, deploy or launch anything async318
- Tons of integrations243
- Rich set of plugins with good documentation211
- Has support for build pipelines111
- Easy setup68
- It is open-source66
- Workflow plugin53
- Configuration as code13
- Very powerful tool12
- Many Plugins11
- Continuous Integration10
- Great flexibility10
- Git and Maven integration is better9
- 100% free and open source8
- Github integration7
- Slack Integration (plugin)7
- Easy customisation6
- Self-hosted GitLab Integration (plugin)6
- Docker support5
- Pipeline API5
- Fast builds4
- Platform idnependency4
- Hosted Externally4
- Excellent docker integration4
- It`w worked3
- Customizable3
- Can be run as a Docker container3
- It's Everywhere3
- JOBDSL3
- AWS Integration3
- Easily extendable with seamless integration2
- PHP Support2
- Build PR Branch Only2
- NodeJS Support2
- Ruby/Rails Support2
- Universal controller2
- Loose Coupling2
Pros of Test Kitchen
- Automated testing6
- Detect bugs in cook books4
- Integrates well with vagrant2
- Can containerise tests in Docker2
- Integrates well with puppet1
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Cons of Jenkins
- Workarounds needed for basic requirements13
- Groovy with cumbersome syntax10
- Plugins compatibility issues8
- Lack of support7
- Limited abilities with declarative pipelines7
- No YAML syntax5
- Too tied to plugins versions4
Cons of Test Kitchen
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What is Jenkins?
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