With the growing use of online platforms and the rise in the number of online products/service providers, user expectations are getting higher by the passing day. To keep up with tough online competition and retain customers, releasing advanced features regularly is essential.
This is where the concepts of Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Development (CD) come into the software development process. Through CI/CD, the businesses are able to put up their software applications for their audiences’ use and add advanced features from time to time via release cycles.
Jenkins and Gitlab are open source CI/CD servers that enable automation for various stages of software development, testing, and deployment. This article compares these two widely used CI/CD servers. But before they are compared, let’s discuss these servers and how they function individually.
What is Jenkins?
Jenkins is an automation server that is self-contained and open source. It allows the building, testing, and deployment for every release cycle of software. Through its fleet of plugins (over 1700) that seamlessly integrate with most CI/CD tools, Jenkins offers flexibility and covers almost all functional requirements.
Moreover, since Jenkins is written in Java, it is compatible with any system that has Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed. This makes Jenkins widely usable due to its easy availability.
Jenkins is one of the most popular CI/CD automation servers in existence due to the following features:
- Easy Installation
It is self-contained and offers complete installation packages for various operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix-based systems. To install Jenkins, all one needs is JRE installed in the system.
- Easy Configuration
Configuring Jenkins is easy as it can be set up through its web interface. The web interface is very user-friendly, and configuration becomes easier with the built-in help offered by Jenkins.
- Open Source
Jenkins is open source, so one can save on the hefty cost of license fees.
- Distribution
Jenkins allows its users to distribute the workload across various machines located at different locations. With builds, tests, and deployments placed across multiple platforms, the process becomes faster as the system offers more productivity by working in parallel on different systems. This saves time and reduces the time frame of release cycles.
- Extensible
Jenkins can be used to deliver over a fleet of functionalities due to strong plugin support. One can use Jenkin for projects as simple as those just requiring a CI server to complex projects involving CD.
- Plugins
Jenkins offers comprehensive support for a wide range of plugins, where the user has the flexibility to choose a plugin that fits their business requirements. The massive number of plugins (1700+) are updated from time to time and offer every possible CI/CD functionality.
- Strong Community Support
Jenkins has a strong and vibrant community of technical experts who support others working on Jenkins. This makes it easier to find solutions to possible issues through mutual cooperation and sharing ideas.
What is GitLab?
GitLab is a self-contained platform that supports the DevOps lifecycle through its web-based services. It manages the Git-repository through its Continuous Integration and Deployment pipelines, issue-tracking features, and wiki to store relevant files.
GitLab works on a freemium basis, i.e., it offers both free and paid services. It enables automation of the entire DevOps lifecycle, which involves planning, building, testing, deployment, and monitoring through release cycles.
Stages of DevOps Lifecycle
Source: GitLab Documentation
GitLab enables Concurrent DevOps, which speeds up the development lifecycle. Through its services, GitLab combines Development, Security, and Ops to deliver faster with utmost security. It is written in Ruby, but the tech stack includes Go, Ruby on Rails, and Vue.js.
GitLab has gained a lot of traction in the CI/CD landscape due to the following features:
- Insights
GitLab offers business insights that help manage the business aspects of the product. These insights allow users to keep track of changes implemented in the system and their implications on product performance. However, this feature is only available for paid versions.
- User Role Management
It offers user role compliances to make the process more streamlined and secure. In addition to this, GitLab also provides user statistics that help in resource management and improve project management efficiency.
- Issues Tracking
Tracking and assigning issues is easy with Gitlab through Task Lists, Thread Discussions, Labels, Milestones, Importing of issues from JIRA, and many more features, that allows effective resolution of issues through proactive, effortless tracking.
- Merge Management
Collaborating and Version Control become seamless with GitLab due to easily implemented code merge requests and merge management systems done upon code review of branches.
- Plugins
GitLab is well supported by several plugins that help make the different stages of DevOps a lot more efficient. These plugins can be used depending upon business requirements.
- Support
GitLab offers Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and 24×5 Technical Support to paid users. They also have extensive and comprehensive documentation, covering a vast number of issues.
- Community
It has a vibrant community forum that allows the users and technical experts from different parts of the world to connect, share their ideas, and collaborate for building better DevOps practices.
Jenkins vs GitLab
- Language
Jenkins: Java
GitLab: Ruby
- Ease of Installation
Jenkins: Easy to Install
GitLab:Easy to Install
- Plugins
Jenkins: 1700+ plugins available
GitLab: Limited Plugins
- Prerequisites
Jenkins: JRE should be installed
GitLab: Ruby, Go, Git, Node.js, and Redis should be installed
- Operating Systems Supported
Jenkins: Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix-like OS
GitLab: Supports only particular Unix-like OS such as Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat Linux, Scientific Linux, Oracle Linux, CentOS, and OpenSUSE. It does not support Windows and macOS
- Open Source
Jenkins: Open Source and Free
GitLab: Open Source and Freemium
- Issue Tracking
Jenkins: Don’t have such functionality
GitLab: Offers various features for issue tracking and management
- Extensiveness
Jenkins: Highly extensive as it can be used as a simple CI server or can be transformed into a complex CD system with the help of plugins
GitLab: Offers scalability to enhance the DevOps lifecycle for a project
- Support
Jenkins: Offers documentation and open source community support, but no technical support is provided as part of the SLA
GitLab: Provides 24×5 support for paid users and only self-support documents to free users as part of the SLA
Which one is better: Jenkins or GitLab?
Both Jenkins and GitLab have their own set of pros and limitations, which means choosing between them is subjective to the scenario they will be used for. Although Jenkins offers more flexibility and just requires JRE as a prerequisite, it lacks support for SLA and project management features that GitLab offers. However, each of them is at par when supporting CI/CD for a software project through their advanced infrastructure and features.
Thus, it depends on the project requirements and the priorities to choose one among these two CI/CD servers.
No matter which CI/CD server is chosen, testing the application’s cross-platform compatibility on real browsers and devices is mandatory. It is the only way to guarantee that the software delivers seamless and consistent UX irrespective of the device and browser used to access them.
Emulators and simulators simply do not offer the real user conditions that software must run within, making the results of any tests run on them inaccurate. Consider testing websites and apps on a real device cloud, preferably one that offers the latest devices, browsers, and OS versions. This applies to both manual and automated testing.
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