CI/CD Tools for 2023

Introduction

Continuous integration systems are designed with one goal in mind: to make code integration into a common repository as simple as feasible. This is typically accomplished using automated tools that integrate with your Git repositories. Additionally, CI systems enable teams to release new updates more frequently, reducing total cycle time.

Continuous deployment technologies then take these new changes and rapidly and safely deliver them to production. CD tools aim to shorten the time it takes to build, test, and deliver software. This article covers detailed knowledge of CI/CD Tools.

What Are the Benefits of Using CI/CD Tools?

A robust CI/CD pipeline will significantly improve the performance of your developers. Here are the most significant benefits of using CI/CD tools:

• Better Code Quality

You can use CI/CD tools to assist you in finding faults and flaws in the code before releasing it to end users because they have a robust and in-depth grasp of your codebase. By doing this, you can make sure that your software projects are usable.

• Improve Cycle Time

As they automate the incorporation of code into the repository, CI/CD systems enable dev teams to produce more code more frequently. And when code is quickly sent to production, your developers and clients will be happier, products will receive frequent upgrades, and total cycle times will be substantially shorter.

• Improve Productivity and Efficiency

You may obtain insight into team performance with CI/CD solutions, allowing you to identify and prevent bottlenecks. They also enable development teams to tailor their workflow to their requirements, ensuring they always have what they need to complete their tasks.

• Easy Automation

CI/CD solutions make the development, integration, and testing processes easier. Additionally, using a single system enables you to automate the development, build, test, and deployment phases. Additionally, it lessens manual labor requirements and raises the standard of the code provided to consumers.

• Reduce Developer Friction

CI/CD technologies are an excellent method to automate time-consuming operations that developers previously performed manually. Some of them, for example, automate the container-building process, allowing developers to deploy and patch programs more quickly.

CI/CD Tools You Should Consider

Numerous CD and CI technologies have recently entered the market in response to the expansion of agile practices, making it difficult for software engineers to decide which CD and CI tools or CI/CD frameworks are optimal to learn for professional advancement. Here is a list of the top CD CI tools you can learn in 2023 to help with the process.

• Jenkins

Jenkins is a Java-based open-source, cross-platform program that allows users to test and report in real-time, making it one of the best CI/CD systems on the market today.

Jenkins is easy to use and interfaces with crucial cloud systems such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and DigitalOcean. Its CI/CD pipeline includes critical modeling and implementation tools in a domain-specific language that developers may use.

It is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux. It is popular among large organizations and startups due to its open-source, free, robust, and adaptable nature.

Critical Features of Jenkins:

• Easy installation on various operating systems

• Simple and user-friendly interface

• Extensible- Due to a large number of community-contributed plugins

• Easy configuration of the environment in the user interface

• Supports master-slave architecture for distributed builds

• Schedules creation based on expressions

• GitLab

GitLab CI is a highly regarded continuous integration and delivery technology for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

GitLab CI combines numerous functionalities into a single dashboard, including Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Code Reviews, and Continuous Deployment, all with an intuitive user interface.

The caching function in the widely used CI/CD pipeline tool saves time. The cache can be shared between branches of the same branch. Caches can also be disabled for specific tasks.

GitLab CI is an excellent tool since it enables users to perform builds using the Shell Executor, similar to terminal-based programs. It allows developers to create custom pipelines and ensures a smooth transition from existing CI/CD technologies.

Key Features of GitLab

• A single distributed version control system is utilized to design, develop, and manage project data and codes to enable quick iteration.

• Collaboration on projects and code results in a single point of truth and scalability.

• It enables delivery teams to integrate continuously by automating source code builds, integration, and verification.

• Container scanning, static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), and dependency scanning can all be used to deliver safe, license-compliant apps.

• Travis CI

Travis CI is a continuous integration (CI) solution for project development and testing. Travis CI automatically identifies and pushes new contributions to a GitHub repository, builds the project, and runs tests in reaction to each new code commit.

It supports various programming languages, including Android, Java, JavaScript (with Node.js), C, C#, C++ Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, and more.

Key Features of Travis CI:

• Super quick setup

• Live build views for GitHub projects monitoring

• Deployment to multiple cloud services

• Pre-installed database services

• Auto deployments on passing the builds

• Supports all operating systems

• Bamboo

Buddy is a web-based automation platform that specializes in DevOps operations. The application is built for ease of use, with a simple user interface and workflow orchestration. Buddy’s skills are constantly improving as the development team adds new features regularly. Buddy accelerates the entire CI pipeline by utilizing intelligent change detection, caching, and parallelism.

Key features of Bamboo

• It supports up to 100 remote build agents

• It can run batches of tests in parallel and provide feedback quickly

• It features per-environment permissions, allowing developers and testers to deploy to their environments whenever possible while the production environment remains locked down.

• Detects newly created branches in Git, Mercurial, and SVN Repos and automatically applies the main line’s CI scheme.

• Triggers are created depending on changes found in the repository. Pushes Bitbucket notifications, a defined timetable, the completion of another build, or any combination of the above.

• TeamCity

TeamCity is an open-source, accessible, and widely used CI/CD solution built by JetBrains that integrates with Jira Software, Azure DevOps, NuGet, Maven, Visual Studio Team Services, and Docker.

TeamCity, available on Linux and Windows and recognized as one of the best server-based CI/CD pipeline solutions in Java, conducts parallel builds, allowing users to run builds on several platforms simultaneously.

Key Features of TeamCity

• Allows you to reuse settings and configurations from the parent project in various ways in the subproject.

• Concurrent builds are run on many environments at the same time.

• Allows you to run history builds, see test history reports, pin, tag, and favorite builds.

• It is simple to customize and interact with the server.

• Maintains the functioning and stability of the CI server.

• Flexible user administration, user role assignment, user grouping, several authentication methods, and a log of every user activity ensure complete transparency of all server actions.

Conclusion

CI/CD tools are a crucial aspect of modern software development processes. They help teams automate their software delivery pipeline, ensuring faster and more efficient software releases. Numerous CI/CD tools are available in the market, each with unique features and capabilities. Some popular CI/CD tools include Jenkins, Travis CI, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, and TeamCity. These tools offer benefits such as easy integration with other tools, scalability, flexibility, and support for multiple programming languages and platforms.

Evaluating and comparing different tools based on factors such as ease of use, reliability, security, pricing, and support is crucial before making a final decision.