A person who has used all five CI/CD tools explains them. No corporate advertising. Just frank thoughts about what works, what doesn’t, and who ought to use each.
We’ve all used subpar CI tools, after all. The kind where troubleshooting a YAML indent takes three hours. The kind where plugins compete with one another. The kind when someone forgets to pay the bill, and a line forms for forty minutes.
Those are not these five. They are productive. They are not perfect. However, they won’t make you detest your work.
5 CI/CD Tools Developers Actually Use
1. Jenkins
Jenkins is old. 2011, for example. That is outdated in terms of software. The problem is that it still runs half of the builds on the internet.
On your own server, you install it. or a virtual machine. Or, if you’re more sophisticated, Kubernetes. Jenkins is unconcerned. It is a Java application that simply builds things.
Jenkins is not a helpful tool in and of itself. The plugins are the cause. More than 1800 of them. When someone pushes to GitHub, do you need to start a build? A plugin is available. After the tests are successful, do you want to deploy to AWS? plugin. When the build fails, would you like to send a GIF to Slack? There is something for it.
The negative aspect? You have to manage it. Everything. Disk space cleanup, plugin updates, and security patches. Jenkins occasionally breaks in strange ways. One day, the master node ran out of memory, causing your builds to stop. One more day, a plugin update clashes with three others. You come to detest Thursdays.
However, Jenkins is free and completely customisable if you have an operations guy who likes this stuff. No vendor lock-in in the cloud. No price per minute. pure automation power.
In reality, who uses this? businesses with on-premises needs. teams unable to send code to the cloud. traditional stores that have been using Jenkins since 2015 and don’t feel the need to make any changes.
2. GitLab CI
Every tool you use should be replaced by GitLab. Code hosting, monitoring, security scanning, CI/CD, issue tracking, and container registry. It’s ambitious. It can be effective at times.
Your repository contains the CI component. A.gitlab-ci.yml file is dropped into the root directory. This file outlines your pipeline, including what to run, when to execute it, and what to do if tests are successful. After reading that file, GitLab launches containers to carry out your tasks.
GitLab CI’s simplicity is what makes it appealing. No need to set up a separate service. No need to set up webhooks. Like your code, your pipeline is just another file in your project. Review, merge, and version it.
You get 400 build minutes a month with the free tier. For minor projects, that’s acceptable. You can either self-host or pay for larger teams. GitLab is a beast when self-hosted. It desires recollection. lots of memory. I’ve observed it using 8GB to operate a simple instance.
Additionally, GitLab functions best when you commit to their entire ecosystem. You will despise yourself if you attempt to utilize GitLab for continuous integration and GitHub for code. There is no integration.
In reality, who uses this? open-source initiatives. small groups that prefer to have everything in one location. businesses that are willing to pay for the hosted version.
3. GitHub Actions
GitHub saw that all users were utilizing their repositories with other continuous integration technologies. Thus, they constructed their own. To be honest, it’s quite good.
Within GitHub, actions take place. YAML files are created within the.github/workflows folder. GitHub uses their runners to carry out your workflows when you push code. They provide free Linux, Windows, and macOS computers (within some bounds).
The marketplace is the key component. Reusable actions are shared by people for everything. Install on S3? Someone took action. Do security scans? Take action. Forward a message to Teams? Take action. You don’t often start from scratch when writing.
We value the matrix feature as well. Your code can be tested concurrently across several Node versions and operating systems. Suddenly, you’re testing eighteen combinations instead of just one YAML block.
The drawbacks? GitHub is locked to you. Your CI travels with you if you ever depart. For private repos, the free tier offers 2,000 minutes per month. That works well for small teams, but if you have a lot of commits, it quickly runs out. And intricate processes turn into YAML soup. Errors in indentation will cost you hours of your life.
This tool would be very helpful to everyone who is already on GitHub. Because it’s free, open source maintainers adore it. Because it only takes five minutes to set up, startups employ it.
4. CircleCI
Before cloud computing became popular, CircleCI was cloud-first. This is what they have been doing since 2014. The item has a polished appearance.
A.circleci/config.yml file is used to configure it. Workflows and jobs are defined in that file. Because CircleCI uses Docker containers for everything, your environment can be replicated. “Works on my machine” bullshit is over.
We were impressed by the speed. CircleCI uses aggressive caching. It could take five minutes to complete your first project. Due to pre-existing dependencies, the second takes two minutes. Additionally, they facilitate parallelism and test splitting. By running across four containers, one customer I know reduced their 45-minute test suite to 12 minutes.
Debugging is simpler here than it is with other tools. You can use SSH to directly access a failed build. This implies that you can investigate, examine logs, and determine what went wrong without having to restart the entire pipeline.
CircleCI is pricey, though. The free tier provides 6,000 construction minutes for up to five persons. That appears generous until you have a busy workforce. The pricing page is not very clear. Credits, concurrency, minutes it’s a lot.
5. Azure Pipelines
Microsoft entered the field of continuous integration with Azure Pipelines. It is a part of Azure DevOps, which was formerly called Team Foundation Server. The product is still among the greatest tools available, despite multiple rebrandings.
Every platform, language, and cloud environment is supported by Azure Pipelines. Microsoft products are not the only options available to you. Even after creating a Node application and deploying it to AWS, you may still use their pipelines.
YAML or a visual editor can be used to define pipelines. The visual editor is useful for novices. You can drag and drop tasks. However, real teams prefer YAML since it is versionable.
Microsoft offers free hosted agents for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Open source projects receive unlimited minutes, which is really generous. Each month, five individuals get 1,800 minutes for private, closed-source projects.
However, there is a severe learning curve. The two pipeline models YAML and traditional don’t always work well together. It’s a busy user interface. You can navigate through five windows to access basic settings.
Azure Pipelines also has a corporate feel to it. If you require permission gates and audit records, that’s great. If all you want to do is run tests on a basic Node application, it’s unnecessary.
Who actually uses this? Microsoft retailers and companies that must abide by the rules. Teams that use Windows containers (because Windows is hard for other technologies to use).
If you are having trouble making a decision, think about the following scenarios:
If my code is hosted on GitHub, I use Actions. No explanations.
If my code is kept in GitLab, I make use of its continuous integration. for the same reason.
If I had to start from scratch with no preexisting repository, I would rather use CircleCI. It’s fast and has great debugging, so I don’t mind paying for quality.
If I have security concerns or am on a tight budget, Jenkins satisfies all of my needs and operates on a $5 virtual machine.
When my employer asks for audit trails and approval workflows, Azure Pipelines provides compliance.
What Everyone Gets Wrong
People act as though CI/CD is difficult. It’s not. This is the basic version: test each commit. Build anything if the tests are successful. Deploy the build if it succeeds.
That’s all. Everything else is optimized. Don’t begin with a flawless pipeline. Start with something that executes npm test (or the equivalent in your language). Later on, add deployment. Later on, add parallel jobs. Later on, add security scanning. On the first day, you don’t need everything.
Cache your dependencies as well. The number of builds that I have witnessed repeatedly re-downloading the identical packages is uncountable. That is a waste of time and money.
Additionally, please refrain from including secrets in your YAML files for the sake of automation. There is a secrets manager for every tool. Make use of it.
Bottom Line
The ideal tool is not necessary. You need one that doesn’t make you want to give up and integrates with your current workflow. Give one a try. Construct a basic pipeline. Check to see if it fits. Try another if it doesn’t. The expense of switching is not very great.
Simply quit doing manual deployments. Your future self will thank you.
