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This article mainly introduces "CI/CD tools choose Jenkins or GitLab CI/CD". In daily operation, I believe many people have doubts about whether CI/CD tools choose Jenkins or GitLab CI/CD. The editor consulted all kinds of materials and sorted out simple and easy-to-use methods of operation. I hope it will be helpful to answer the doubts of "CI/CD tools choose Jenkins or GitLab CI/CD". Next, please follow the editor to study!

Over the past decade, great progress has been made in the areas of continuous integration (Continuous Integration,CI) and continuous delivery (Continuous Delivery,CD). The rise of DevOps testing has led to a rapid demand for CI/CD tools. Existing solutions always improve over time, and a large number of new products or versions are entering the QA field. When you have so many options at hand, choosing the right tool can be a bit of a challenge.

Of all the CI/CD tools available for testing, Jenkins and GitLab CI/CD are the two tools you should definitely consider. Jenkins has 16000 + likes on GitHub, while GitLab CI/CD has 2012 likes. The number of likes of Jenkins is more than 8 times that of GitLab CI/CD. However, these numbers are not the only thing to look at when choosing a CI/CD tool. This is also because, despite the huge gap in the number of likes, Jenkins vs GitLab CI/CD still has fierce competition on multiple review platforms.

Take G2 as an example, Jenkins has an average score of 4.3stars and 288comments on G2, while GitLab CI/CD has an average score of 4.4stars and 270comments on G2. It can be said that Jenkins vs GitLab CI/CD is a close competition. Interestingly, Jenkins was released in 2011, and it has always been the first choice for testers in the CI/CD business. However, since its release in 2014, GitLab CI/CD has been at the top of the list with cutting-edge features. When we published this article, we conducted a poll on social media.

Another tool that has been mentioned most frequently is GitLab CI/CD. As an DevOps testing expert, you need to carefully review these tools in terms of your own projects, budgets, and other needs. To help you, I will do an in-depth assessment of Jenkins vs GitLab CI/CD to help you identify the right CI/CD tools to meet your project needs.

1. Jenkins introduction

Jenkins is a well-known extensible open source CI/CD tool for automated deployment. Jenkins is written entirely in Java and is released under the MIT license. It has a set of powerful functions to automate related tasks such as software construction, testing, deployment, integration and release. This automated CI/CD tool for testing can be used on macOS, Windows, and various UNIX versions (such as OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc.). In addition to being installed through a local installation package, it can be installed separately or as a Docker on any machine that has installed the Java Runtime Environment (Java Runtime Environment,JRE).

The Jenkins team also has a subproject called Jenkins X, which runs an out-of-the-box pipeline that works seamlessly with Kubernetes. Jenkins X cleverly integrates Helm, Jenkins CI/CD server, Kubernetes, and other tools to provide a canonical CI/CD tool pipeline with built-in best practices, such as using GitOps to manage the environment.

One bonus to using Jenkins is that the script is well-structured, easy to understand, and readable. The Jenkins team has developed nearly 1000 plug-ins that allow applications to be mixed with other familiar technologies. In addition, plug-ins such as Credentials Command can be used. This makes it easy and feasible to add hidden authentication credentials and so on to the script.

Once Jenkins pipeline is up and running, you can also verify whether each phase passed or not and the total number of each phase. However, you cannot check the status of a particular job in the graphical overview provided. What you can do is track the progress of the homework in the terminal.

2. Core features of Jenkins

Jenkins is known for its ease of configuration, automating the build process, and the extensive documentation it provides to users. When it comes to DevOps testing, Jenkins is considered to be very reliable and there is no need to monitor the entire build process, while other CI/CD tools are not so at ease. Let's take a look at some of the most important features that Jenkins offers--

1. Free, open source and easy to install

Jenkins is very easy to install on macOS, Unix, Windows and other platforms. It can be combined with Docker to bring higher consistency and additional speed to automated jobs. It can be run as a servlet in Java containers such as Apache Tomcat and GlassFish. You can find a lot of support and documentation to guide the installation process.

two。 Extensive plug-in ecosystem

The plug-in ecosystem of this tool is more mature than other CI/CD tools. Currently, this ecosystem provides 1500 + plug-ins. Because these plug-ins range from language-specific development tools to build tools, this makes customization very simple and convenient. Therefore, you do not need to buy expensive plug-ins. Jenkins plug-in integration also applies to some DevOps testing tools.

3. Easy to install and configure

The configuration process of this tool is very simple and only requires a few steps during installation. The upgrade process for Jenkins is not troublesome and straightforward. And the supporting documentation is also very helpful for you to configure tools according to your own needs.

4. A useful community

As you know, this is an open source project with a huge plug-in ecosystem, and the functionality of all plug-ins is supported by a large number of community contributions. The amazing community participation that accompanies Jenkins is also one of the main reasons for its maturity.

5. Provide REST API

Jenkins provides a REST-style application program interface for easy extension. There are three different styles of remote access API for Jenkins-Python, XML, and JSON (which supports JSONP). There is a page on the Jenkins website with descriptive documentation about Jenkins API that helps with expansion.

6. Support for parallel execution

Jenkins supports parallel testing. You can easily integrate it with different tools and be notified of the success of the build. Developers can even execute multiple builds in parallel on different virtual machines to speed up the testing process.

7. Assign work easily

It can run distributed work effortlessly, that is, tasks run on different machines without affecting the GUI (user graphical interface). It is worth mentioning that compared with other CI/CD tools, only this tool can use the same instance as running GUI-related tasks.

3. GitLab CI/CD introduction

Of all the CI/CD tools used for testing, GitLab CI/CD is undoubtedly the latest and most admired choice. It is a free and self-hosted continuous integration tool built into GitLab CI/CD. There is a community version of GitLab CI/CD that provides git warehouse management, problem tracking, code review, wiki, and activity subscriptions. Many companies install GitLab CI/CD locally and connect it to Active Directory and LDAP servers for secure authorization and authentication.

GitLab CI/CD was previously released as a stand-alone project and has been integrated into the GitLab main software since the official release of GitLab 8.0 in September 2015. A single GitLab CI/CD server can manage more than 25000 users, and it can also form a high availability configuration with multiple active servers.

GitLab CI/CD and GitLab are written in Ruby and Go and released under the MIT license. In addition to the CI/CD capabilities that other CI/CD tools focus on, GitLab CI/CD also provides planning, packaging, source management, distribution, configuration, and review.

GitLab CI/CD also provides repositories, so the integration of GitLab CI/CD is simple and straightforward. When using GitLab CI/CD, the phase command consists of a series of phases that are implemented or executed in a precise order. After implementation, each job is described and configured with various options.

Each job is part of a phase and automatically runs in parallel with other jobs at similar stages. Once you do that, the homework is configured and you can run the GitLab CI/CD pipe. The results will be demonstrated later, and you can check the status of each assignment you specify at some stage. This is where GitLab CI/CD differs from other CI/CD tools for DevOps testing.

4. GitLab CI/CD: core feature

GitLab CI/CD is one of the most popular CI/CD tools for DevOps testing. GitLab CI/CD is well documented, easy to control and has a good user experience. If you are new to GitLab CI/CD, I have listed the main features of GitLab CI/CD, which will help you understand it. Come and see.

1. High availability deployment

It is widely adopted and is one of the latest available open source CI/CD tools. The installation and configuration of GitLab CI/CD are simple. It is a free and self-hosted continuous integration tool built into GitLab. GitLab CI/CD has evolved into one of the most popular free CI/CD tools for automated deployment.

2.Jekyll plug-in support

The Jekyll plug-in is a static website generator with good support for GitHub Pages, which makes the build process easier. The Jekyll plugin supports the use of HTML files and Markdown to create a completely static site based on your layout preferences. You can easily configure most Jekyll settings, such as plug-ins and themes for your site, by editing your _ config.yml file.

3. Milestone setting

The milestone setting in the tool is a good way to track problems, improve a series of problems, and draw requests for warehouses. You can easily assign project milestones to any problem, or merge requests that are not common in the project, or assign group milestones to a set of questions, or merge requests for any project in that group.

4. Auto-scalable continuous integration operator

The auto-scalable GitLab continuous integration runner can easily manage and save 90% of EC2 costs. This is really important, especially for parallel test environments. Also, for component-level or project-level runners, they can be used across code bases.

5. Problem tracking and problem discussion

Because of its powerful problem tracking and problem discussion capabilities, GitLab is the CI/CD tool of choice for countless open source projects. It cleverly allows you to test and pull requests and branches in parallel. For simple and convenient monitoring, the test results are displayed on GitHub UI. Because of its simple user interface, it is more user-friendly than Jenkins.

6. Managing Git Warehouse with access Control

You can easily manage git repositories with access. You can easily grant write / read access to collaborators in a single warehouse, and even members of a particular organization can have finer-grained access control over the organization's repositories.

7. Active community support

An active and progressive community is a major plus for GitLab CI/CD. All the support provided is out of the box and does not need to be modified in additional plug-in installations.

8. Code review and merge requests

GitLab CI/CD is used not only to build code, but also to review code. It allows for improved collaboration using simple merge requests and merge management systems. It supports almost all version control systems and build environments. A large number of collaboration solutions have been implemented under the GitHub project, which contribute to the expansion of GitLab CI/CD.

5. Functional comparison of Jenkins vs GitLab CI/CD

Both Jenkins and GitLab CI/CD have areas in which they are very good at and their respective technical followers. However, when discussing the Jenkins vs GitLab CI/CD debate, many features are discussed. The following figure shows a comparison of all the features provided by the two CI/CD tools.

6. Differences between Jenkins vs GitLab CI/CD

Now that you've seen the functional comparisons between Jenkins vs GitLab CI/CD, it's time to take a look at the differences between the two DevOps testing tools. These differences will help you understand the real reasons behind the Jenkins vs GitLab CI/CD battle.

With the help of GitLab CI/CD, you can control the Git repository through full control of branches and other aspects, thus protecting your code from sudden threats. However, when using Jenkins, you can control the code base, but there are only a few aspects. Jenkins does not allow full control of branches and other aspects.

Jenkins is "internally hosted" and "free and open source", which is why programmers choose it. On the other hand, GitLab CI/CD is "self-hosted" and "free", which is why developers prefer it.

In GitLab CI/CD, each project has a tracker that tracks issues and conducts code reviews to improve efficiency. In the Jenkins tool, it changes some setup support and a simple installation and configuration process.

7. Advantages and disadvantages of Jenkins vs GitLab CI/CD

I hope you understand the two tools of Jenkins vs GitLab CI/CD now. To go a step further, I listed the main advantages and disadvantages related to Jenkins vs GitLab CI/CD. I know you have decided which DevOps testing tool you want to use, and this section will help you strengthen your belief in choosing the right CI/CD tool.

Advantages of Jenkins

A large number of plug-in libraries

Self-hosting, such as full control of the workspace

Easy to debug and run, due to absolute control of the workspace

It is easy to build nodes

Easy to deploy code

Very good credential management

Very flexible and diverse features

Support for different languages

Very intuitive

Shortcomings of Jenkins

Plug-in integration is complex

It is more expensive for smaller projects, because you need to build it yourself.

Lack of analysis of the entire pipeline trace

Advantages of GitLab CI/CD

Better Docker integration

It is easy to run a program to expand or contract

Jobs in phases are executed in parallel

The opportunity of directed acyclic graph pipeline

It is very easy to expand and contract because of running programs concurrently.

Merge request integration

It is easy to add jobs

Easy to deal with conflict problems

Good security and privacy policy

Shortcomings of GitLab CI/CD

Need to define a build and upload / download for each job

It is impossible to test the merge state before the actual merge occurs

Subdivision stages are not supported yet

8. How to choose Jenkins vs GitLab CI/CD

Both Jenkins and GitLab CI/CD have their own advantages and disadvantages, and your final choice between these two tools depends on the project requirements and specifications. Each of these CI/CD tools has its own strengths and weaknesses and is released with exactly the same requirements: the process of automating CI/CD (continuous integration and delivery). Jenkins is for continuous integration, while GitLab CI/CD is for code collaboration and version control.

When choosing the best CI/CD tool for DevOps testing, in addition to outstanding features, you should also look at the price list and internal proficiency.

At this point, the study on "CI/CD tools to choose Jenkins or GitLab CI/CD" is over. I hope to be able to solve your doubts. The collocation of theory and practice can better help you learn, go and try it! If you want to continue to learn more related knowledge, please continue to follow the website, the editor will continue to work hard to bring you more practical articles!

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