Knapsack Pro

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

Google Cloud Build

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

Travis CI

https://travis-ci.org
Unique feature

Security / speed

Build Matrix, ease of use, GitHub integration

Type of product

SaaS

SaaS, Self-hosted / 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

Free for open source projects

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

Clearly defined monthly plans, depending on concurrent jobs needed.

Support / SLA

Yes

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

Yes

Available via email, or dedicated online interface for paid plans.

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

TravisCI makes it very easy to split your build into different stages which are then run in parallel (ie: run integration tests separate from the unit tests). TravisCI calls this a build matrix: https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/build-matrix/. You can also very easily split tests accross several VMs using the knapsack_pro gem.

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

N/A

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

Native Docker and Packer support

Yes

TravisCI runs each build in a isolated virtual machine. Pre-build packages include a few which support specific languages (Ruby and JavaScript included) or other software (Git, various databases), but vanilla packages such as Ubuntu Trusty are also available.

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

Available by default in Travis (this is what most of the web UI consists of)

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

Yes

N/A

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

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

Configurable via YML and/or JSON files.

No

Specifically built around GitHub pull requests. Pipelines can be defined, but parts of the process need to be implemented separatelly in GitHub.

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 (partial)

No persistent storage eliminates the possibility of code coverage reports on TravisCI alone. There is support for integrated 3rd parties such as Coveralls for reporting code coverage.

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

No plugin support in TravisCI, plugins for other tools

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

TravisCI is designed to be a simple way to integrate CI/CD in your workflow so it has a couple of features aimed at specific languages, such as Ruby, starting from pre-built containers (with RVM already installed, for example) all the way to automatically running specific platform commands (such as detecting a Gemfile in the root of the project and automatically bundling dependencies). TravisCI also builds a Ruby SDK for easier use of the API.

Specific language support: JavaScript

Yes (partial)

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

Yes

TravisCI is designed to be a simple way to integrate CI/CD in your workflow so it has a couple of features aimed at specific languages, such as Javascript, starting from pre-built containers (with node already installed, for example) all the way to automatically running specific platform commands (such as detecting a package.json in the root of the project and running npm test)

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

By default, TravisCI is built to work with GitHub. Additionally, there is strong support for 3rd party tools like Coveralls, BrowserStack, 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

Offers a feature-rich API that allows both reading data, as well as triggering or cancelling builds.

Auditing

Yes

N/A

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.

Travis CI build matrix feature how to use it for CI parallelisation

Travis CI parallelism integration

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