Knapsack Pro

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

Gitlab CI

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

Bamboo

https://www.atlassian.com/software/bamboo
Unique feature

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

Atlassian suite integration

Type of product

SaaS / On Premise

On Premise

Offers a free plan

Yes

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

Yes

The full Atlassian suite is free for open source projects (https://www.atlassian.com/software/views/open-source-license-request). For all others, they offer a minimal free trial.
Predictable pricing

Yes

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

Yes

They price their product based on number of build agents (more concurrency, more expensive). Given the notoriety and depth of the Atlassian suite, the pricing can be steep for small companies.
Support / SLA

Yes

All paid plans include next business day support.

Yes

Dedicated tehnical 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

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

Yes

Up to 100 parallel agents
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

Yes

Yes

Agents can run on multiple machines.
Containers support / Build environment

Yes

The Docker Container Registry is integrated into GitLab by default

Yes

By default, they offer Docker support for the CI/CD job runners.
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

Excellent dashboards, even more so thanks to integrations with the other tools in the Atlassian arsenal
Management support
How easy is it to manage users / projects / assign roles and permissions and so on

Yes

Yes

Great management support, built for large scale companies, even allows setting per-environment permissions (ie: QA team can only deploy to their own, isolated environment)
Self-hosted option

Yes

Yes

Hosted plans / SaaS

Yes

No

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

Advanced pipeline support - with features built for feature branch support, various triggers, schedules, external notifications and more.
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

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?

Yes

Yes

Large selection (~200) of apps that integrate with Bamboo, available on the official marketplace for Bamboo: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/addons/app/bamboo
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

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

Yes (partial)

It looks like the documentation and features for Ruby are lagging behind. All I could find is this repo: https://github.com/drscream/bamboozled-ruby-plugin, following this support ticket: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BAM-10948 from this documentation stub page: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bamboo0601/getting-started-with-ruby-and-bamboo-935580774.html
Specific language support: JavaScript

Yes

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

No

No specific support, beyond some documentation on integrating Selenium (not marked as partial support since that documentation is only promoted in the Atlassian docs, but is hosted by BrowserStack)
Integrations
1st party support for common tools (like Slack notifications, various VCS platforms, etc)

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

Yes

Deep integration with the Atlassian product stack (Jira, etc.).
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 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.

Yes

Auditing

Yes

Yes

Additional notes

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/

Not really something that should be purchased separatelly from the Atlassian stack.

How to run parallel tests on Gitlab CI and Bamboo
to execute 1-hour test suite in 2 minutes?

Without Knapsack Pro

you have to wait 20 minutes for slow tests running too long on the red node

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Run fast parallel CI build with Knapsack Pro

CI build completes work in only 10 minutes because Knapsack Pro ensures all parallel nodes finish work at a similar time

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You can even run 20 parallel nodes to complete your CI build in 2 minutes

How it works

Step 1

Install Knapsack Pro client in your project


Step 2

Update your CI server config file to run tests in parallel with Knapsack Pro


Step 3

Run a CI build with parallel tests using Knapsack Pro

Diagram that shows files distributed to 3 parallel CI nodes


Knapsack Pro in Queue Mode splits tests in a dynamic way across parallel CI nodes to ensure each CI node finishes work at a similar time. Thanks to that, your CI build time is as fast as possible. It works with many supported CI servers.

How to install it

Programming Language Supported test runners Installation guide Knapsack Pro Library
README / Source
Ruby RSpec, Cucumber, Minitest, test-unit, Spinach, Turnip Install knapsack_pro gem
JavaScript Cypress.io Install @knapsack-pro/cypress
JavaScript Jest Install @knapsack-pro/jest
JavaScript / TypeScript Any test runner in JavaScript How to build native integration with Knapsack Pro API to run tests in parallel for any test runner @knapsack-pro/core
Any programming language Any test runner How to build a custom Knapsack Pro API client from scratch in any programming language -

Do you use other programming language or test runner? Let us know.

Do you know

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Get faster feedback from Gitlab CI and Bamboo server

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Knapsack Pro terminal

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

Gitlab CI parallelism integration

Introduction to CI parallelisation with Knapsack Pro

Run tests in parallel on Gitlab CI and Bamboo in the optimal way and avoid bottleneck parallel jobs.

How much can you save with faster tests
on Gitlab CI and Bamboo?

minutes
$

Monthly you can save hours
and up to $
on faster development cycle.

Features that make your tests perform better

Discover all features or see
how to use Knapsack Pro with your CI

Trusted solution

Join the teams optimizing their tests with Knapsack Pro.

We've been really enjoying Knapsack Pro, it's been saving us a ton of time.

Devin Brown Software Engineer at Pivotal

This is a fantastic product, it's been a total game-changer for us.

Geoff Harcourt CTO at CommonLit

We are using CircleCI and we noticed that builds were being limited by the slowest parallelized container. Knapsack Pro was really east to setup and we saw huge improvements right away. Thank you for making this tool!

Martin Sieniawski Software Engineer at Collage

Knapsack Pro has helped us build an insanely fast and scalable build pipeline with almost no setup or maintenance.

Tim Lucas Co-founder of buildkite.com

Knapsack Pro saves us hours of engineer waiting time every week, and is the best solution for keeping our tests load balanced that we've used to date.

Michael Amygdalidis Senior Software Engineer at Popular Pays

I've been playing with Queue Mode. Love it! Wow, I love how fast it goes.

Michael Menne CTO at humanagency.org

I just logged into my account expecting it to say that I needed to add a credit card and was so surprised and delighted to see the trial doesn't count usage by calendar days but by testing days! This is incredible! I love it!!!

I just wanted to say that I really appreciate that small but very huge feature. Thank you for being so thoughtful :)

Shannon Baffoni Senior Software Engineer
at Blue Bottle Coffee

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