Knapsack Pro

Cirrus CI vs Gitlab CI comparison of Continuous Integration servers
What are the differences between Cirrus CI and Gitlab CI?

Cirrus CI

https://cirrus-ci.org

Gitlab CI

https://about.gitlab.com/product/continuous-integration/
Unique feature

FreeBSD support

AutoDev Ops / Allows keeping code management and CI in the same place

Type of product

SaaS / On Premise

SaaS / On Premise

Offers a free plan

Yes

Free for open source projects

Yes

Very generous free plans for both the SaaS version as well as the on premise version.

Predictable pricing

Yes

Besides the seat (per-user access) you need to buy compute credits for running the build, priced differently depending on the machine you're running builds on.

Yes

Clear and affordable pricing for both SaaS and self-hosted versions.

Support / SLA

N/A

Not clear if they offer any real SLA on support.

Yes

All paid plans include next business day support.

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

Yes

There are limits on how many tasks can be run in parallel for the free tier builds: https://cirrus-ci.org/faq/#are-there-any-limits

Yes

Easily configure jobs you want to be run in parallel via the YML config file (gitlab-ci.yml)

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

Yes

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

Allows containers or VMs for every major operating system.

Yes

The Docker Container Registry is integrated into GitLab by default

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

Yes

Management support
How easy is it to manage users / projects / assign roles and permissions and so on

N/A

Yes

Self-hosted option

Yes

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

Defined via YML config files

Yes

Defined via YML config files

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.

N/A

Yes

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

Yes

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)

No specific support from what I can gather, but it does provide documentation for Ruby, including integration with the knapsack_pro gem.

Yes

Although not built into GitLab CI by default, the Docker support allows solving any Ruby specific need that may arise.

Specific language support: JavaScript

No

No specific support and no documentation on setting up a CI/CD process for a Javascript project.

Yes

Although not built into GitLab CI by default, the Docker support allows solving any Javascript specific need that may arise.

Integrations
1st party support for common tools (like Slack notifications, various VCS platforms, etc)

Yes

Integrates well with GitHub - the whole CI/CD process starts with a commit to a GitHub repo.

Yes

Plenty of third party integrations available throughout GitLab, most notably Kubernetes and GitHub, but also plenty of others: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/README.html

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

Provides a pretty nifty GraphQL API which allows querying the Cirrus CI Schema, as well as webhooks support for other types of custom integrations (such as Slack or IRC notifications, for example). They also added support for GitHub actions

Yes

Provides a REST API and a (new) GraphQL API, with plans to maintain the GraphQL API only going forward. Allows doing almost anything that can be done via the interface, at least in terms of CI needs.

Auditing

N/A

From what we can tell, there's no specific support for auditing changes in the Cirrus CI config (other than what is traceable via git commits to the YML config file)

Yes

Additional notes

Seems to be used by companies with a solid engineering background (Google)

The Auto DevOps feature might be interesting to people looking for a very hands-off experience with getting a CI/CD process up and running https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/topics/autodevops/

GitLab CI parallelisation - how to run parallel jobs for Ruby & JavaScript projects

Gitlab CI parallelism integration

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