Knapsack Pro
Knapsack Pro
Gitlab CIhttps://about.gitlab.com/product/continuous-integration/ |
Dronehttps://drone.io |
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|---|---|---|
| Unique feature |
AutoDev Ops / Allows keeping code management and CI in the same place
|
Customization
|
| Type of product |
SaaS / On Premise
|
SaaS / 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 cloud version is free for open source projects. Also offers a free plan for any project, with a limit of 5000 builds per year. The on-premise version is available as a Docker image. |
| Predictable pricing |
Yes Clear and affordable pricing for both SaaS and self-hosted versions. |
Yes Predictable pricing based on number of users and repositories. They have a calculator to help determine cost. |
| Support / SLA |
Yes All paid plans include next business day support. |
N/A It's not clear what their support commitment is. They have a fairly active community on Discourse, for community 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 Pipeline task configuration allows running tasks 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 |
Yes
|
Yes Pipelines can be configured to run on multiple machines, although they recommend that to be an option only if paralellizing tasks and scaling vertically doesn't suffice. They even support multi-platform distribution (ie: running tasks on various operating systems) |
| 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
|
|
Management support
How easy is it to manage users / projects / assign roles and permissions and so on |
Yes
|
Yes They offer in-depth documentation for user and server management. A lot of it can be done via the drone CLI tool, which seems to be the focal point of the docs. |
| Self-hosted option |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| Hosted plans / SaaS |
Yes
|
Yes
|
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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 Easily configurable pipelines via YML 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. |
Yes
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N/A
|
|
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 Drone CI allows integrating plugins into the CI/CD process. They have a list of available community plugins and provide documentation on building your own. Plugins are Docker containers which plug directly into the CI/CD process. |
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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. |
Yes Although not built into GitLab CI by default, the Docker support allows solving any Ruby specific need that may arise. |
No (partial) No specific support, but they do provide sufficient documentation on getting a Ruby project up and running, including a multi-platform example. |
| 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 (partial) No specific 1st party support, but the plugin marketplace features an NPM authoring and an NPM authentication plugin. |
|
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 Integrates well with source code management platforms (1st party support for GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket) as well as other systems via 3rd party plugins. |
|
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 Drone provides a feature-rich REST API, as well as an official Go SDK for it. |
| 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/ |
The fact that Drone works with any source code manager, as well as the fact that it can run tasks on multiple platforms makes it stand out from the rest. Very nifty! |