Knapsack Pro

Solano CI vs GoCD comparison of Continuous Integration servers
What are the differences between Solano CI and GoCD?

Solano CI

https://xebialabs.com/technology/solano-ci/

GoCD

https://www.gocd.org
Unique feature

N/A

Free, open source CI/CD server

Type of product

N/A

On Premise

Offers a free plan

No

Their website only mentions a free trial

Yes

Free, open source software. They provide some Enterprise add-ons and support at a cost though.

Predictable pricing

No

Very hard to get any information on pricing. It seems like they target enterprise clients only.

Yes

For the Enterprise plans, they specify very clear tiers depending on the number of pipelines (directly correlated with the size of the organization)

Support / SLA

N/A

Yes

Paid support available for enterprise 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

N/A

They mention that by paralellizing tests they get a huge performance boost (10x to 80x) but details are severly lacking.

Yes

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

They specify supporting tools like TLB (http://test-load-balancer.github.io/) which would require distributed builds.

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

Yes

Native Docker and Kubernetes support

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

The wording they use implies that this is possible.

Yes

One of the greatest things about GoCD is their Value Stream Map which allows tracing every pipeline through every stage, from code commit, to testing and deployment. They also offer various dashboards for seeing status at a glance.

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

N/A

Yes

Allows managing users, assigning roles, and even defining user groups with specific rights for certain pipelines.

Self-hosted option

N/A

Yes

Hosted plans / SaaS

N/A

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

The wording they use suggests that this is possible.

Yes

Fairly advanced support, from config files (YML, Groovy, JSON, etc) to API and UI interface for building and managing pipelines.

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.

N/A

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?

N/A

Probably not, considering how non-transparent this product is.

Yes

Wide array of plugins available: https://www.gocd.org/plugins/#artifact (although they seem to pride themselves on the fact that most common operations / needs are first class citizens, so no plugins needed)

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

Yes

Available via plugins, such as the Gem repository poller: https://www.gocd.org/plugins/#package-repo

Specific language support: JavaScript

N/A

Yes

Available via plugins, such as the npm repository poller: https://www.gocd.org/plugins/#package-repo

Integrations
1st party support for common tools (like Slack notifications, various VCS platforms, etc)

N/A

Yes

Integrations are also available via plugins (for notifications, LDAP authorization, Elastic agents and more): https://www.gocd.org/plugins/#notification

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

N/A

Yes

You can build on top of GoCD in a variety of ways, from writing custom plugins to using the CCTray feed provided by it.

Auditing

N/A

Yes

Additional notes

It seems like Solano CI has been retired, and the new solution is the XebiaLabs DevOps Platform, but which integrates Jenkins and Travis, among others: https://xebialabs.com/products/devops-platform-overview/

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