CI/CD Simpler and Faster
Between discovering problems and resolving them sooner, dev teams need to focus on finding answers. Another factor to consider is a framework’s integration options, ease of use, security features, and pricing. With the number of CI/CD options available on the market, we have narrowed down the options based on these parameters and what their more niche functions are.
1. Jenkins
Jenkins is an open-source, server-based system that runs on containers like Apache Tomcat. It is a self-contained, Java-based package with support options for multiple operating systems. Along with being incredibly user-friendly, there is a large community available to provide help. Build schedules are based on expressions and support shells, Windows commands, and active notifications for the development team on the build status.
2. CircleCI
CircleCI along with automated testing and deployment also features automatic code building. Using integration options with GitHub and Bitbucket, submitting sections of code will automatically result in a new build of the applications. There are a number of customization options for this framework, including running on a firewall or on private infrastructure, automated parallelization, automated commands for uploading packages, and the option for running the framework on either a container or a virtual machine.
3. TeamCity
JetBrain’s solution to CI/CD TeamCity can help launch a variety of projects. It runs on a Java environment, integrates with Visual Studio and IDEs, supports both Windows and Linux, and has the capability to support both .NET and open-stack projects. More importantly, it allows users to make the most of their application’s history to their advantage. Users can run, test, pin, and favorite current or older builds of the application, use older configurations, To make evaluations of certain builds faster, different builds can be run in parallel through different environments.
4. AWS CI/CD Tools
AWS does have a comprehensive list of services and software that can complement the development of applications on the platform with benefits such as easier integration, high availability, cost savings, and other benefits otherwise offered by the cloud. The CI/CD functionality comes complete with:
- AWS CodeCommit - CodeCommit is specifically for hosting scalable and secure Git repositories. These repositories can encrypt files in transit, remain highly available, can be established close to environments for staging and production, and work great at scale.
- AWS CodeBuild - CodeBuild lets users automatically run test builds with minimal oversight on the used servers. Provisioning and scaling are all managed automatically, and compiles source code and produces ready-to-use code packages.
- AWS CodeDeploy – CodeDeploy manages the automation of code deployment across environments. Users can monitor the fleet of the environments and keep track of deployment status.
- AWS CodePipeline - CodePipeline helps to automate the sustained health of deployed applications. It lets users add new features faster, react faster to customer feedback, and catch bugs before they reach the production build. Pipelines can be further refined with customer-implemented plugins.
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5. GitLab
GitLab CI/CD is a service integrated with GitLab SaaS and is self-managed by GitLab. It offers preconfigured options and language detection that let it automatically generate templates for building and running applications. This platform is incredibly flexible, provides great security, helps to assure quality, and is easy to learn and use. It does suffer with a less than reactive UI and has difficulties working at scale or with bigger projects. While the free version does offer a decent amount of resources, the premium versions’ price tags can be a turning point for a lot of potential users.
Automation is Key
Embracing DevOps practices to enable the continuous delivery of improved applications more agilely involves leveraging modern technologies such as containers alongside adopting Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) architectures. These technological advancements have significantly transformed the software development landscape, introducing complexities that require a holistic understanding from DevOps practitioners.
But with greater complexity comes much greater risk. Having more variables and tasks to individually manage leaves room for mistakes and oversights to occur. Automating a CI/CD pipeline helps make sure basic tasks are accomplished much more consistently and grant some leeway to return to other neccesary tasks in the development cycle.
I am a recent graduate from the University of Wisconsin - Stout and am now working with AllCode as a web technician. Currently working within the marketing department.
