Knapsack Pro
Knapsack Pro
AWS CodeBuildhttps://aws.amazon.com/codebuild/ |
AppVeyorhttps://www.appveyor.com |
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|---|---|---|
| Unique feature |
AWS integration
|
Supports NuGet packages / Windows build environment
|
| Type of product |
SaaS
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SaaS / On Premise
|
| Offers a free plan |
Yes The AWS free-tier includes 100 build-minutes per month, on their smallest machine. It's unclear, but it seems like this applies only to the first year of service. |
Yes Free SaaS plan for open source projects. There is also a free on premise version, but it's quite limited (1 user, 1 team, community support) |
| Predictable pricing |
Yes (partial) While it's clear what the cost is (priced per build-minute), figuring out costs can be a hassle, especially as the price can vary quite a bit depending on commits to the project. |
Yes Very simple pricing plans: 3 options for the SaaS version, two options for the on premise option. No variable pricing. |
| Support / SLA |
Yes
|
Yes All paid on premise plans offer support, as well as the two higher priced SaaS plans. Only community support available for the free on premise version and the lowest SaaS tier. |
|
Paralellism
Every CI servers tends to address this differently (parallel, distributed, build matrix). Some of it is just marketing, and some is just nuance. For this table, parallel means that tasks can be run concurrently on the same machine, distributed means that tasks can be scaled horizontally, on multiple machines How to split tests in parallel in the optimal way with Knapsack Pro |
N/A
|
Yes Allows splitting tests to run on different VMs in parallel. |
|
Distributed builds
distributed means that tasks can be scaled horizontally, on multiple machines How to split tests in parallel in the optimal way with Knapsack Pro |
N/A
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N/A
|
| Containers support / Build environment |
Yes Builds run in specific-to-the-project, isolated environments |
Yes Runs every build in a VM, and it offers several options depending on the plan (SaaS or self-hosted) as well sa personal preference. |
|
Analytics / Status overview
Analytics and overview referrs to the ability to, at a glance, see what's breaking (be it a certain task, or the build for a specific project) |
Yes Offers minimal information built in, but allows integrations with tools such as CloudWatch (another Amazon product), or streaming build information to your own API, for more in-depth analysis. |
Yes The dashboard is not as great as for other options in the market, but allows seeing project status at a glance. |
|
Management support
How easy is it to manage users / projects / assign roles and permissions and so on |
Yes Professional user management via AWS Identity and Access Management: https://aws.amazon.com/iam/ |
Yes Allows creating teams and assigning roles. There is some integration with GitHub Teams but the concepts are different which might be tricky depending on how the GitHub project is managed, for instance. |
| Self-hosted option |
No
|
Yes
|
| Hosted plans / SaaS |
Yes
|
Yes
|
|
Build pipelines
A continuous delivery pipeline is a description of the process that the software goes through from a new code commit, through testing and other statical analysis steps all the way to the end-users of the product. |
Yes As it's usually the case with Amazon, CodeBuild simply provides the 'build' part of a true CI/CD system, while pipelines are managed via CodePipeline, another Amazon product: https://aws.amazon.com/codepipeline/pricing/?nc=sn&loc=3 |
Yes There is a single predefined possible pipeline, which defines various hooks (such as before_build / after_build). The pipeline can be configured via the UI or via an appveyor.yml file. The two are mutually exclusive, so it's either one or the other. |
|
Reports
Reports are about the abilty to see specific reports (like code coverage or custom ones), but not necesarily tied in into a larger dashboard. |
Yes Offers minimal information built in, but allows integrations with tools such as CloudWatch (another Amazon product), or streaming build information to your own API, for more in-depth analysis. |
Yes Notifications are highly configurable, but visual reports such as code coverage is not easy to implement. |
|
Ecosystem
Besides the official documentation and software, is there a large community using this product? Are there any community-driven tools / plugins that you can use? |
N/A
|
N/A
|
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Specific language support: Ruby
Some CI servers have built-in support for parsing RSpec or Istanbul output for example and we mention those. Some others make it even easier by detecting Gemfiles or package.json and automate parts of the process for the developer. |
No (partial) The environments available on CodeBuilt include Ruby pre-installed: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codebuild/latest/userguide/build-env-ref-available.html, but that seems to be as far as specific support goes |
Yes Many Ruby gems use AppVeyor as their CI server of choice. Among the features for Ruby are the pre-installed Ruby versions on both Windows and Ubuntu servers, as well as the appveyor-worker gem which makes it easy to report status during the build process. |
| Specific language support: JavaScript |
No (partial) The environments available on CodeBuilt include Node pre-installed: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codebuild/latest/userguide/build-env-ref-available.html, but that seems to be as far as specific support goes |
Yes Comes with node.js and io.js versions pre-installed. Also offers documentation on npm integration on their website. |
|
Integrations
1st party support for common tools (like Slack notifications, various VCS platforms, etc) |
Yes CodeBuild builds can be connected to sources such as GitHub or BitBucket, but being an Amazon Service, the deepest integrations are with other Amazon Code services (CodePipeline, CodeDeploy, and others: https://aws.amazon.com/products/developer-tools/) |
Yes Probably the most notable aspect here is the large array of deployment integrations available (from simple FTP uploads to Azure servers or NuGet packages). |
|
API
Custom integreation is available, via an API or otherwise, it's mentioned separately as it allows further customization than any of the Ecosystem/Integration options |
Yes Amazon SDKs can be used to interact with CodeBuild |
Yes Offers a basic CRUD REST API for querying projects and builds as well as a real-time Build Worker API which can send updates on build status. |
| Auditing |
Yes
|
N/A
|
| Additional notes |
Like most things Amazon, it becomes more valuable as you acquire and integrate various Amazon solutions, not necesarily as a standalone tool. |
Very Windows oriented |