Gitlab CIhttps://about.gitlab.com/product/continuous-integration/ |
Buildkitehttps://buildkite.com |
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Unique feature |
AutoDev Ops / Allows keeping code management and CI in the same place
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Runs on own infrastructure, API
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Type of product |
SaaS / On Premise
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SaaS
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Offers a free plan |
Yes Very generous free plans for both the SaaS version as well as the on premise version. |
Yes Free for open source projects and selected organizations |
Predictable pricing |
Yes Clear and affordable pricing for both SaaS and self-hosted versions. |
Yes Clearly defined monthly and annual plans |
Support / SLA |
Yes All paid plans include next business day support. |
Yes Depending on the plan, ranging from community support, all the way to an assigned Technical Manager, SLAs and live chat 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 Run an unlimited number of concurrent agents, and an unlimited number of concurrent jobs. You can run your tests in isolated Docker container per agent. |
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 Run an unlimited number of concurrent agents, and an unlimited number of concurrent jobs |
Containers support / Build environment |
Yes The Docker Container Registry is integrated into GitLab by default |
Yes Since the agents run on your own infra, you're free to do whatever |
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
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Yes The Buildkite UI features great vizualisations that feature build times, error rates, and more. |
Management support
How easy is it to manage users / projects / assign roles and permissions and so on |
Yes
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Yes
|
Self-hosted option |
Yes
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No
|
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 Pipelines are defined using an Yaml config file and allow for great flexibility in defining what each step of the process does. |
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
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Yes
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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
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Yes Integrations for GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket as well as SSO support (Google Suite, SAML, GraphQL API). Growing number of community plugins: https://buildkite.com/plugins |
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 You can find useful plugins like https://github.com/sj26/rspec-buildkite https://github.com/ticky/simplecov-buildkite etc |
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
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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 Integrations for GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket as well as SSO support (Google Suite, SAML, GraphQL API) |
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 Great GraphQL API, allows building your own dashboard with ease |
Auditing |
Yes
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Yes
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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/ |
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