Best CI/CD Tools to Consider

The majority of software development organizations are dedicated to providing durable products to their end-users while keeping a closed eye to meet their demands and expectations. The development of quality software is a difficult ‘nut to crack’ due to several issues and implications with regards to evolving business models, software deployment, etc. To put everything in one place, organizations developed methods to build and modify software with ease. Such methods are known as Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. 

Continuous Delivery

Continuous Delivery is a software engineering approach to produce software in short cycles that can be released to production at any time. It is built using Agile methodology followed by the usage of various continuous delivery tools to boost software responsiveness. 

Below are the tools that are used to carry out different stages of Continuous Delivery: 

Benefits of Continuous Delivery

The benefits of Continuous Delivery are as follows:

Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration is the development practice to integrate a developer’s code into a shared repository. It was developed out of Agile Development involving automated compilation, unit test execution, and source control integration. Moreover, Continuous Integration implies frequent checking of code. 

Advantages of CI

The advantages of CI are as follows:

Best CI/CD Integration Tools

Here’s a list of some of the best CI/CD tools: 

Jenkins 

Jenkins is a Java-based CI tool. It is an open-source, cross-platform tool that can be configured using both GUI interface and console commands. It also allows for feature extensions via plugins making it an extremely adaptable tool. The best part about the CI tool is that it is released under the MIT license which is free to use and distribute. 

Teamcity 

Teamcity is a CI tool released by JetBrains. It is a Java-based solution having the best functionality and framework for .Net. Teamcity provides 20 Configurations and 3 Build Agents. There are a variety of plugins available that are developed from JetBrains and third parties. 

Travis CI 

Travis CI is hosted open-source service used to build and test software projects on GitHub. It is used to build apps using VM. It is platform-independent followed by support for multiple languages. Furthermore, one has to choose from a variety of monthly subscriptions to run multiple jobs simultaneously. 

Codeship 

Codeship is a hosted CI and CD platform that helps businesses in the deployment of apps such as Node.js, Ruby, PHP, and Python. It comes with a trial edition that includes one concurrent build and one parallel test pipeline as well as a monthly build limit of 100 Build and 5 projects. The cost varies depending on the bundle as one needs to pay an extra $75 each month on the addition of the Docker platform followed by an alternative to get a custom plan with fully customizable settings. 

Bamboo 

Bamboo CI is a continuous CI/ CD server developed by Atlassian. It has been released in two versions, one being Cloud and the other being server. Both versions provide free trials and pricing plans based on the no. of build agents rather than the no. of users. Two well-known Atlassian products are JIRA and BitBucket. Both are compatible with Bamboo. Moreover, Jenkins configurations can be loaded into Bamboo easily. 

GitHub CI 

GitHub CI is a hosted solution for software development that combines the ability to develop, secure, and operate software in a single application. It is tightly integrated with GitLab and offers git repository management tools such as access control, issue tracking and code reviews, etc. Its process builds are developed in Go and can operate on Windows, Linux, OSX, and Docker, etc. It is available for both the open-source Gitlab Community Edition and Gitlab Enterprises Education, which includes a 45-day money-back guarantee. 

Circle CI 

Circle CI is a Cloud-based CI/CD tool that is also a product of Gitlab Inc. It currently supports GitHub with Java, Ruby/Rails, Node.js, PHP, Haskell, and Skala.