Best CI/CD Tools of 2021 You Must Know About!

Want to frequently deliver apps to customers through automation? As developers you have many automation options like CI/CD. For achieving automation in different stages of app development, a CI/CD tool is a must! CI/CD stamps out the extra burden of integrating new codes for the development and operations teams through continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment.

In the so-called ‘life cycle’ of apps, CI/CD is what enables automation and continuous monitoring throughput that starts from integration and testing till delivery and deployment. These practices are connected and these practices are collectively quoted as CI/CD pipeline. In an agile project management setting with either a DevOps or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) approach, the development team and the operations team has to support the CI/CD pipeline by collaborating together.

What is Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment?

While CD in CI/CD can be either  Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment, both refer to automating the different stages of the CI/CD pipeline. There is a fine line between the two CDs with respect to the amount to which automation is happening. 

• Continuous Delivery: Continuous Delivery refers to the automatic bug testing of a change made to an application by the developer, and the uploading of it to a repository like GitHub. From that point, it is further taken to the live production environment by the operations team. This way the problem of lack of visibility between the development team and the operations team can be solved. With Continuous Delivery, you will have very minimal efforts to deploy new codes.  
• Continuous Deployment: Any changes from the developers end is automatically released for the repository to the production so that it becomes usable by the customers. The usual battle of the operations team getting overloaded with manual processes which in turn leads to delayed app delivery can be addressed. It benefits the continuous delivery side of the app by automating the next stage in the pipeline.
• Continuous Integration: In the modernistic approach of software development, the team members work simultaneously on different features. If you go for merging all branching source code together in one day, then the result can be painstaking and time-intensive. Why because when a developer is working in isolation making a particular change to an application, there can be conflicts resulting from the dependent changes made by the other developers. The problem intensifies as each developer customized their own local Integrated Development Environment (IDE) despite the team agreeing on a single cloud-based IDE. Developers can frequently merge their code changes in a shared branch (trunk) more frequently. These merged changes are automatically authenticated for smooth building of the application and running of the application at different levels of automated testing, particularly unit and test integration tests for making certain that the changes have not negatively impacted  the app- this refers to the fact that everything from classes and functions to the different modules that affects the entire application. If at all a conflict is observed between the existing codes and new codes, Continuous Integration makes it simpler to fix those bugs quickly and frequently.

 

Best CI/CD Tools You Must Know About

If your enterprise wants to accelerate the speed of your product delivery and ensure the quality of your product, then DevOps and Agile methodologies. DevOps has a continual and automated delivery cycle that makes fast and quality-centric product delivery possible.

An excellent CI/CD tool automates your team’s workflow and offers a solid CI/CD pipeline that helps in ramping up your software product. You will find a variety of CI/CD tools in the market and to pick out the right tool that matches your objectives is a tough decision. 

We are making this decision process easier for you by presenting the best CI/CD tools you must know about:

 

• Jenkins

 

Jenkins is Java-based suitable for Windows, MacOS and Unix operating systems with an open source automation server wherein the central build and continuous integration happens. Jenkins has hundreds of plugins that support building, deployment, and automation for software development projects.

Characteristics:

• Simple installation
• Easy upgrading on various Operating Systems
• User-friendly interface
• Extensible with plugin resource
• Easily configurable environment in the UI
• Master-slave architecture supporting distributed builds
• Build expressions-based schedules
• In pre-build steps, shells and Windows command executions are supported
• Notifications supported on the build status

 

• CircleCI

 

CircleCI is one of the best options available for automating the users’ pipeline right from code building to testing and deploying, thereby enabling rapid software development. CircleCI is integrable with GitHub and BitBucket for creating bulbs when new code lines are committed. CircleCI can host continuous integration or can operate on private infrastructure with the help of firewall protection.

Characteristics

• Integrable with GutHub and BitBucket.
• Builds can be run using container or Virtual Machine
• Simple debugging
• Automated parallelization
• Quick tests 
• Customizable emails and notifications
• Branch-centric deployment
• Package unloading through automated merging and custom commands
• Quick setup and infinite builds

 

• TeamCity

 

Different types of .NET and Open-Stack projects can be built and deployed using a continuous integration tool like TeamCity. Itr runs in the Java environment and is installable in Windows as well as Linux servers. TeamCity supports GitLab and BitBucket server pull requests.

Characteristics:

• Settings and configurations of parent projects can be reused in multiple ways for sub-projects.
• Parallel builds can be done simultaneously in different environments.
• History builds can be enabled, test history reports viewed, builds can be pinned, tagged or added to favorites.
• Server is customizable, interactable and extendable.
• Flexible user management.

 

• Bamboo

 

Bamboo maintains a continuous delivery pipeline through management automation of software application releases. Building and functional testing, assigning versions, tagging releases, deploying and activating new versions on production are all covered by Bamboo.

Characteristics:

• 100 remote build agents can be supported
• Test batches can be run in parallel and quick feedback can be taken
• Images can be created and pushed into registry
• Developers and testers can deploy to their environments on demand with pre-environment permissions.
• New branch detection in Git, Mercurial, SVN Repos and applies the main line’s CI scheme to them in an automated way.
• Build triggering based on change detection in the repository. Scheduled-based push notifications from BitBucket regarding the status of another build.

 

• GitLab

 

GitLab’s Git repository has a web-based core product with features like issue tracking, analytics and Wiki. GitLab can trigger builds, run tests, and deploy code with each push. Jobs can be built in a Virtual Machine, Docker Container or any server.

Characteristics:

• Branching tools to view, create and manage codes
• Quick iteration and business value deliverance through single distributed version control system
• Scalable collaboration of projects and codes
• Absolute embracing of build automation, integration and verification of source codes
• Enabled with Container Scanning, Static Application Security Testing (SAST), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) and Dependency Scanning for application security and license compliance.

Conclusion:

Have you found the CI/CD tool that best fits your specifications? The CI/CD tools mentioned above are the finest tools that have all the essential capabilities to suit your project goals. However we would like to remind you that your decisions are dependent on a number of other factors like existing infrastructure, room for future potential and areas of improvements among others. If you are still not sure, take the expert advice of our experts in Webdura!