Among all available CI/CD testing tools, the first two tools you should consider are Jenkins and GitLab CI/CD tools. Jenkins has more than 16,000 stars on GitHub, while GitLab CI/CD has only 2012. Jenkins is more than 8 times that of GitLab CI/CD. However, these numbers are not the only issues to consider when choosing a CI/CD tool. This is why despite the huge difference in the number of stars, Jenkins and GitLab CI/CD still go hand in hand on multiple viewing platforms.
Taking G2[1] as an example, Jenkins has an average rating of 4.3 stars on G2 with 288 reviews, while GitLab CI/CD has a rating of 4.4 stars on G2 with 270 reviews. Therefore, it is not wrong to say that Jenkins and Gitlab CI/CD compete with each other on an equal basis. Interestingly, Jenkins was released in 2011 and belongs to the CI/CD business. It has always been the first choice of testers. However, since its launch in 2014, GitLab CI/CD has been in the top position with its advanced features. We uploaded an article on Travis CI vs Jenkins[2] and conducted a poll on social media[3]. The results are as follows:
Another tool mentioned the most is GitLab CI/CD. As a DevOps testing expert, you need to carefully check these tools according to the project, budget and other requirements. To help you, I will conduct an in-depth evaluation of Jenkins and GitLab CI/CD to help you determine the correct CI/CD tool for your project requirements. Let's start from the basics.
Introduction to Jenkins
The Jenkins team also has a sub-project called Jenkins X, dedicated to running seamless integrated pipelines of Kubernetes, out of the box. Jenkins X cleverly integrates Helm, Jenkins CI/CD server, Kubernetes and other tools to provide an illustrative CI/CD tool pipeline with built-in best practices, such as using GitOps to guide the environment.
One advantage of using Jenkins is that the script structure is reasonable, easy to understand and readable. The Jenkins team has produced about 1,000 plugins, allowing the application to be integrated with other familiar technologies. In addition, you can also use plug-ins, such as Credentials Command, which makes it easy and feasible to add hidden authentication credentials in scripts.
After the Jenkins pipeline starts running, you can also verify whether a certain phase (phase) passed or failed, and the total number of each phase. You cannot check the status of a particular job in the graphical overview provided, but you can track the progress of the job in the terminal.
Jenkins core features
Free, open source and easy to install. Jenkins can be easily used on macOS, Unix, Windows and platforms. It can be used in conjunction with Docker to bring greater consistency and extra speed to automated operations. It can also be run as a servlet in a Java container (such as Apache Tomcat and GlassFish). You can find a lot of support and documentation to guide the entire installation process [4].
Extensive plugin ecosystem. Compared with other CI/CD tools, Jenkins's plugin ecosystem is more mature. Currently, it provides more than 1,500 plugins. These plug-ins have a wide range, both language-specific development tools and build tools, which make customization easy and profitable. Therefore, you do not need to buy expensive plugins. Jenkins plugin integration [5] can also be used for many DevOps testing tools.
Easy to install and configure. The installation and configuration process of the tool is very simple, because the installation process only requires a few steps. The upgrade process of Jenkins is also very easy and straightforward. Similarly, the supporting documentation provided is very helpful to configure the tool according to your requirements.
Helpful community. As you know, this is an open source project with a rich plugin ecosystem, and all plugins and functions have been widely supported by the community. Jenkins' amazing participation with the community is one of the main reasons for its maturity.
Provide REST API. Jenkins provides a RESTful application programming interface to achieve scalability. Jenkin's remote access API has three different styles: Python with JSONP support, XML and JSON. One of the pages on the Jenkins website contains descriptive documentation about the Jenkins API that can help with extensions.
Support parallel execution. Jenkins intelligently supports parallel testing. You can easily integrate it with different tools and get notified when the build succeeds or fails. Developers can even execute multiple builds in parallel across different virtual machines to speed up the execution of their test suites.
Assign work easily. It can run distributed jobs effortlessly, that is, tasks are run on different computers without affecting the GUI (graphical user interface). It is worth noting that, in contrast to other CI/CD tools, only this particular tool can use the same instance of running GUI-related tasks.
Introduction to GitLab CI/CD
GitLab CI/CD used to be an independent project and was integrated with the GitLab 8.0 release in September 2015 into the main GitLab software. A single GitLab CI/CD server can manage more than 25,000 users, and is likely to form a high-availability setup with multiple active servers.
GitLab CI/CD and GitLab are written in Ruby and Go and launched under the MIT license. In addition to CI/CD that other CI/CD tools focus on, GitLab CI/CD also provides planning, packaging, SCM, release, configuration and inspection.
GitLab CI/CD also provides a repository, so the integration of GitLab CI/CD is very simple and clear. When using GitLab CI/CD, the phase command includes a series of phases that will be implemented or executed in a precise order. After implementation, various options will be described and configured for each job.
Each job is part of a stage and will automatically run in parallel with other jobs in similar stages. Upon completion, the job will be configured and all ready to run the GitLab CI/CD pipeline. The results will be explained later, and you will be able to check the status of each job specified in the stage. This is the difference between GitLab CI/CD and other CI/CD tools used in DevOps testing.
GitLab CI/CD core functions
High availability deployment. It is widely used and is one of the latest open source CI/CD tools. GitLab CI/CD is easy to install and configure. It is a free self-hosted CI tool built into GitLab. GitLab CI/CD has gradually developed into one of the most popular free CI/CD tools for deployment automation.
Jekyll plugin support. The Jekyll plugin is a static website generator with strong support for GitHub Pages, which makes the build process easier. The Jekyll plugin supports the use of HTML files and Markdown and creates a completely static site according to your layout preferences. By editing the _config.yml file, you can easily configure most Jekyll settings, such as plugins and themes for your website.
Milestone setting. The milestone setting in the tool is a great way to track issues, improve a series of issues, and draw requests in the repository. You can easily assign project milestones to any issue, or only merge requests in that project, or you can easily assign group milestones to issues, or merge requests from any project in the group.
Auto-scaling CI runner. Auto-scaling GitLab CI running program can easily manage and save 90% of EC2 costs. This is indeed essential, especially for parallel test environments. Similarly, for organization-level or project-level operators, this is useful for cross-organizational warehouses.
Issue tracking and issue reorganization. Due to its excellent issue tracking and issue restructuring capabilities, GitLab is the preferred CI/CD tool for many open source projects. It cleverly enables you to test pull requests and branches in parallel. In order to achieve simple and trouble-free monitoring, the test results are displayed on the GitHub UI. Due to its simple user interface, it is particularly friendly to use when comparing it with Jenkins.
Use access control to manage Git repositories. You can easily manage Git repositories with good access rights. You can easily grant write/read access to collaborators in a single repository, and even members of a specific organization can have more granular access control to that organization’s repository.
Active community support. A positive community is one of the main advantages of GitLab CI/CD. All support is available out of the box and does not need to be modified in other plugin installations.
Code review and merge request. GitLab CI/CD is not only used to build code, but also to review or inspect code. It allows improved collaboration through a simple merge request and merge management system. Support more or less all version control systems and build environments. Many collaborative projects have been implemented under the GitHub project, which help to expand GitLab CI/CD.
Jenkins and GitLab CI/CD comparison snapshot
| characteristic | Jenkins | GitLab CI / CD |
|---|---|---|
| Open source or commercial | Open source | Open source |
| product type | Self-hosted/out of the box | Self-hosted/out of the box |
| Built-in CI/CD | Jenkins supports CI/CD as required | We don’t need to install anything, it’s a built-in feature |
| Unique characteristics | Plug-in | Automatic DevOps/Allow continuous build and code management in the same place |
| product type | Self-hosted/out of the box | SaaS/out of the box |
| Official Support/SLA | No official support and no SLA | Have |
| Installation configuration | easy | easy |
| Self-hosting options | Open source software, self-hosting is the only way to use | Optional |
| Build the pipeline | The pipeline can be customized through the Jenkins pipeline DSL | stand by |
| Application performance monitoring | Features that do not provide analytical performance | Performance data will be displayed for all deployed applications |
| Ecology | 1000 community plugins | stand by |
| Detailed API | Provide detailed API | Provide API to support deep integration of software projects |
| Specific language support: JavaScript | Yes | Yes |
| Integration | Support integration with other tools (such as Slack, GitHub) | Many third-party integration tools are available, the most famous being GitHub and Kubernetes |
| CI/CD deployment Kanban | Partial support for CI/CD features | A customizable independent kanban that supports viewing the history and recent status of the pipeline |
| API | stand by | Support, provide REST API and the latest GraphQL API |
| Code quality | Provide Sonarqube plug-in for code quality check, and other different plug-ins are also supported | GitLab also provides various plugins for code quality inspection |
The difference between Jenkins and GitLab CI/CD
With GitLab CI/CD, you can fully control the branch and several other aspects to control the Git repository to ensure that the code is protected from sudden threats. However, in the case of Jenkins, you can control the repository, but the scope is limited. It does not allow full control of branches and other aspects.
Jenkins is "internally hosted" and "free and open source", which is why coders prefer 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 will track issues and perform code reviews to improve efficiency. When using Jenkins tools; it changes the support set and simplifies the installation and configuration process.
Functional differences between Jenkins and GitLab CI/CD
Advantages of Jenkins
Large plugin library
Self-hosting, ie full control of the workspace
Easily debug and run tasks to complete work area control
Easy to set up nodes
Easy to deploy code
Good credential management
Flexible functions
Support different languages
Very intuitive
Disadvantages of Jenkins
Complex plug-in integration.
Small projects are relatively expensive because you have to set it yourself.
Lack of analysis of the overall tracking of the pipeline.
Advantages of GitLab CI/CD
Better Docker integration
The extended task is simple
Execute jobs in parallel in stages
You can add a directed acyclic graph pipeline
Concurrent running program has good scalability
Merge request integration
Easy to add work
Easy to handle conflict issues
Good security and privacy policy
Disadvantages of GitLab CI/CD
Need to define artifacts and upload/download for each job.
It is not possible to test the merged state of the branch before the actual merge occurs.
The stage in the stage is not currently supported.
Jenkins and GitLab CI/CD, which CI/CD tool should you prefer?
In addition to the outstanding features, you should also browse the price list and internal proficiency to select the best CI/CD tool for DevOps testing.
I wish you a happy test!
Related Links:
https://www.g2.com/products/jenkins/reviews
https://www.lambdatest.com/blog/travis-ci-vs-jenkins/
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sarahelson85_cicd-travisci-jenkins-activity-6691235216599658497-Cs4M
https://www.jenkins.io/doc/book/installing/
https://www.lambdatest.com/support/docs/jenkins-with-lambdatest/
Original link: https://www.lambdatest.com/blog/jenkins-vs-gitlab-ci-battle-of-ci-cd-tools/