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Travis CI vs Visual Studio App Center: What are the differences?
Key Differences between Travis CI and Visual Studio App Center
Travis CI and Visual Studio App Center are both popular tools used in software development for continuous integration and delivery. However, they have some key differences that set them apart.
Integration with Different Platforms: Travis CI primarily focuses on providing continuous integration for GitHub hosted projects. On the other hand, Visual Studio App Center supports a wide range of platforms including iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and more. This makes App Center a more versatile tool for developers working on various platforms.
Testing and Monitoring Capabilities: Visual Studio App Center offers advanced testing and monitoring capabilities compared to Travis CI. App Center provides features such as automated UI testing, beta distribution, crash reporting, and analytics. These features enable developers to thoroughly test and monitor their applications across multiple platforms, helping them to deliver high-quality software.
Build Configurations: Travis CI uses a declarative YAML-based configuration file to define the build and deployment process. On the other hand, Visual Studio App Center provides a user-friendly interface that allows developers to configure and manage builds without writing complex YAML files. This makes App Center a more beginner-friendly tool for developers who are not familiar with YAML configurations.
Community Support and Integrations: Travis CI has a strong community presence and offers hundreds of third-party integrations, allowing developers to customize their workflows. Visual Studio App Center, being a part of the Microsoft ecosystem, offers seamless integration with various Microsoft tools and services such as Azure DevOps, HockeyApp, and more. This integration provides developers with a comprehensive suite of tools to streamline their development and deployment process.
Pricing: Travis CI offers a free tier for open-source projects, giving developers a cost-effective solution. However, for private repositories and larger scale projects, paid plans are required. On the other hand, Visual Studio App Center offers a free tier with limited features, but for more advanced features and larger teams, paid plans are required. The pricing structure of these tools may influence the choice of developers based on their project requirements and budget.
Market Share and Popularity: Travis CI is a widely used and established continuous integration tool with a large user base. It has been around since 2011 and is considered one of the pioneers in the CI/CD space. Visual Studio App Center, being a relatively newer tool, is gaining traction in the market due to its integration with the Microsoft ecosystem and advanced features.
In summary, Travis CI is primarily focused on continuous integration for GitHub projects, while Visual Studio App Center offers a wider platform support, advanced testing capabilities, user-friendly build configurations, integration with Microsoft tools, and a growing market presence.
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).
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.
We were long time users of TravisCI, but switched to CircleCI because of the better user interface and pricing. Version 2.0 has had a couple of trips and hiccups; but overall we've been very happy with the continuous integration it provides. Continuous Integration is a must-have for building software, and CircleCI continues to surprise as they roll out ideas and features. It's leading the industry in terms of innovation and new ideas, and it's exciting to see what new things they keep rolling out.
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 Travis CI
- Github integration506
- Free for open source388
- Easy to get started271
- Nice interface191
- Automatic deployment162
- Tutorials for each programming language72
- Friendly folks40
- Support for multiple ruby versions29
- Osx support28
- Easy handling of secret keys24
- Fast builds6
- Support for students4
- The best tool for Open Source CI3
- Hosted3
- Build Matrices3
- Github Pull Request build2
- Straightforward Github/Coveralls integration2
- Easy of Usage2
- Integrates with everything2
- Caching resolved artifacts1
- Docker support1
- Great Documentation1
- Build matrix1
- No-brainer for CI1
- Debug build workflow1
- Ubuntu trusty is not supported1
- Free for students1
- Configuration saved with project repository1
- Multi-threaded run1
- Hipchat Integration1
- Perfect0
Pros of Visual Studio App Center
- Show error issues for mobile devices1
- Slack integration1
- Bug tracking integration1
- For Mobile apps diagnostics and tracking1
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Cons of Travis CI
- Can't be hosted insternally8
- Feature lacking3
- Unstable3
- Incomplete documentation for all platforms2
Cons of Visual Studio App Center
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