Knapsack Pro

Github Actions vs Jenkins comparison of Continuous Integration servers
What are the differences between Github Actions and Jenkins?

Github Actions

https://github.com/features/actions

Jenkins

https://jenkins.io
Unique feature

Best GitHub integration possible

Plugins

Type of product

SaaS / On Premise

Self-hosted / On Premise

Offers a free plan

Yes

The on premise plan (not yet available) will be free, 2000 build minutes included in the free cloud plan. Completely free plan for open source projects.

Yes

Free, open source software

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. One advantage for GitHub Actions is that the tiers define a maximum amount of minutes, so it's easier to predict the final cost. You can also purchase aditional runners with pricing dependent on the platform (MacOS, Linux, Windows)

Yes

Jenkins is free software, the only costs are those assigned to running your infrastructure.

Support / SLA

Yes

Community support available for any tier, unclear at what point and if dedicated support is available. Safe to assume that eneterprise clients can access technical support.

No (partial)

No official support available, or SLAs. However, Jenkins' popularity ensures you'll find support in various places (official Jenkins forum, IRC, StackOverflow etc.)

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

Matrix builds allow concurrent jobs, even multi-platform.

Yes (partial)

Jenkins allows builds to be run in parallel, but all builds share the same environment and there can be issues arising from shared resources such as the filesystem.

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

No specific mention, but given the fact that tasks can be run on multiple platforms, it's likely that distributed builds are also available.

Yes (partial)

Jenkins has a concept of master server and agents, for distributing builds, but setting that up requires quite a bit of manual work from a sysadmin, compared to other options.

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

Linux, macOS, Windows, and containers, or run directly in a VM.

No (partial)

By default, Jenkins runs all builds in the same environment as the build server itself, which can lead to numerous issues and is generally not a good practice. Some plugins address this issue, but they need to be manually installed.

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

Minimal status overview definitely available, with live logs and GitHub integration. Unclear how far it goes.

Yes

Available via the Blue Ocean project (part of Jenkins): https://jenkins.io/doc/book/blueocean/dashboard/#dashboard

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

N/A

Unclear from the available documentation

No

In practice, for Jenkins it usually means that there's someone solely in charge of the Jenkins instance (configuration, management). Collaboration features built into other similar products are lacking, as are governance features (no easy way to tell from Jenkins alone _who_ is responsabile for a broken build, for example), even if your Version Control Server of choice can give that information (via `git blame` for example).

Self-hosted option

Yes

Coming soon, not available yet.

Yes

Jenkins is Open Source Software, and self-hosting is the only way to use it.

Hosted plans / SaaS

Yes

No

Only available for self-hosting.

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

Called GitHub Action Workflows, they are defined in separate Docker containers, using the YAML syntax (they used to support HCL, but they're migrating away from that)

Yes

Offers extensive support for custom pipelines, either through the Jenkins Pipeline DSL, written in a Jenkinsfile, either through the Web UI. Also, their Blue Ocean project is a great tool for building pipelines: https://jenkins.io/projects/blueocean/

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

Unclear from the available documentation

Yes

Has ready-made integrations for standard reports such as JUnit test results.

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?

Yes

Thanks to the large following, GitHub Actions already enjoys a wide varierty of available pre-made workflows, which you can browse right on the homepage: https://github.com/features/actions

> 1000 community plugins

Thanks to it's popularity, there's a large selection of available plugins for Jenkins. They can all be easily browsed over at https://plugins.jenkins.io/. The downside is that almost anything you want to do in Jenkins requires installing a plugin, even core functionality such as parsing output or checking out source code.

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.

Yes

Unclear how, but they mention Ruby support specifically on the homepage

Yes (Partial)

RSpec and Cucumber test suites can be integrated into Jenkins thanks to the large pool of available plugins and Ruby gems. Jenkins only understands the JUnit format natively.

Specific language support: JavaScript

Yes

Unclear how, but they mention Javascript (Node.js) support specifically on the homepage

Yes (Partial)

Jest, AVA and other test suites can be integrated into Jenkins thanks to the large pool of available plugins and NPM packages. Jenkins only understands the JUnit format natively.

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

Yes

Integrations made possible via the shared third party workflows available (AWS, Azure, Zeit, Kubernetes and many more)

Yes

Allows integrations with other tools (ie: Slack, GitHub) or communication protocols (ie: email) via it's rich plugin suite

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

N/A

Unclear at the moment, but assume GitHub Actions will be integrated with the GitHub GraphQL API (one of the more mature GraphQL API implementations available)

Yes

For use-cases that the +1k plugins don't cover, the Jenkins Remote API is yet another way to integrate Jenkins into your favorite tools or internal products.

Auditing

N/A

No

Jenkins instances are really managed by a sole user with administrative privileges. This can lead to various issues when it comes to audit trails / accountability.

Additional notes

GitHub Actions testing Ruby on Rails with RSpec and parallel jobs (matrix feature)

How to run Jest tests on GitHub Actions - JS parallel jobs with matrix feature (NodeJS YAML config)

GitHub Actions Cypress.io E2E testing parallel jobs with matrix feature (NodeJS YAML config)

Continuous delivery pipelines in Jenkins and CI parallelisation

Github Actions parallelism integration

Jenkins parallelism integration

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