Knapsack Pro

Google Cloud Build vs Bamboo comparison of Continuous Integration servers
What are the differences between Google Cloud Build and Bamboo?

Google Cloud Build

https://cloud.google.com/cloud-build/

Bamboo

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

Security / speed

Atlassian suite integration

Type of product

SaaS

On Premise

Offers a free plan

Yes

Google offers a generous 120 build-minutes per day plan, not including time spent waiting in the queue.

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 (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.

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

Even available as a paid add-on, for 24/7 phone support for example: https://cloud.google.com/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

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

N/A

Yes

Agents can run on multiple machines.

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

Native Docker and Packer support

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

No (partial)

While there's no self hosted variant, they provide a local Cloud Build image which allows you to build locally, very valuable for debugging.

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

Configurable via YML and/or JSON 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

There are predefined images built for Cloud Build, which can be integrated right away in your build process. Some of them are first party: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/cloud-builders and others are community contributed: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/cloud-builders-community

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.

N/A

Nothing specific as far as we can tell

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 (partial)

npm, yarn and jasmine-node support via predefined Cloud Build steps.

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

Various integrations available via custom Build Steps, as well as natively (Kubernetes, Docker, etc.)

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

REST API and comprehensive CLI tool, as well as a pub/sub system for build notifications.

Yes

Auditing

Yes

Yes

Additional notes

Not unlike other Google tools, there's a strong emphasis on allowing developers to build on top of the service. Becomes more valuable if you're using other Google Cloud services as well.

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

Start using Knapsack Pro with Google Cloud Build or Bamboo

Sign up and speed up your tests.

Get started free