The best thing your team can do to increase productivity is to adopt a continuous integration methodology. You must carefully choose the continuous integration tools that best suit your needs because their success significantly depends on them. To assist you in selecting between several solutions, we’ve examined seven of the most popular continuous integration systems and outlined their benefits.
But first, let’s define continuous integration for a moment before we explore the best continuous integration tools.
Importance of Continuous Integration
When the development team adds changes to version control, continuous integration (CI), a process of build automation, and code testing are performed. Following the conclusion of each project job, developers use the continuous integration process to share and integrate their modifications (code and unit tests) into a single version control repository.
Here are some of the explanations of why continuous integration is important:
- CI helps to prevent merge conflicts, challenging issues, duplicate code, and inconsistent coding techniques.
- CI contributes to shorter code reviews and more uniform project code.
- CI speeds up the development process and pushes releases closer
- CI ensures continuous feedback
- CI helps to reduce the project backlog
Continuous integration is quite helpful, but it also takes a lot of labor. Fortunately, there are resources to make sure you succeed.
Continuous Integration Tools
The top seven tools for continuous integration that you should employ for your project are listed below:
- Jenkins
One of the most well-liked free open-source CI programs that are frequently used in software engineering is Jenkins. It is a Java-based server-based CI program that needs a web server to run. Numerous consumers enjoy working with Jenkins because it makes automating builds and tests simple.
Highlights:
- Local application
- Completely free
- Deep workflow customization
- Rich in features and plugins
- Easy installation thanks to the pre-installed OS X, Unix, and Windows packages
- Made by developers for developers
- A well-established product with an excellent reputation
- TeamCity
During the first 100 build configurations, TeamCity, a potent commercial Continuous Integration solution, is available free of charge. You may label your builds, perform concurrent builds, and find hung builds using TeamCity. TeamCity is simple to install and has a very user-friendly UI. You’ll adore the community and professional help there as well.
Highlights:
- Free up to 100 build configurations
- Running three builds concurrently with three build agents
- Able to import source code from two different VCS into a single build
- Capacity to substitute testers with agents
- Allows testing changes without committing them to the VCS
- Bamboo
Atlassian’s Bamboo is a server-based Continuous Integration and deployment platform with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop user interface. Developers who already use other Atlassian services frequently choose this tool. Bamboo enables the creation of new branches automatically and their merging following testing. Continuous deployment and delivery are simple to achieve using this technology.
Highlights:
- Effortless integration with other Atlassian tools
- User-friendly UI with drag-and-drop functionality
- Great notification procedure
- Easy administration for enterprise CI scaling
- Allows test automation with the help of elastic agents
- Manages to build artifacts automatically through every pipeline run
- Buddy
Buddy is a platform for continuous integration, continuous deployment, and feedback in DevOps. This tool was developed for use with projects that incorporate code from GitHub and Bitbucket repositories. Buddy is a for-profit tool with a clear, approachable interface and material design that is minimalist. This customer-centric solution offers self-hosting on a server in its enterprise edition and offers live representative service around the clock.
Highlights:
- Instinctive UI
- Intuitive deployment flow building
- Docker support
- Available presets and hints
- Offers advanced automation while requiring basic knowledge
- Ability to make corrections to the developed code
- Flexible automation, cloning, variables, connections and notifications
- GitLab CI
A free continuous integration tool with an open-source code is called GitLab CI. For projects hosted on GitLab, this highly scalable tool is simple to install and configure thanks to GitLab API. GitLab CI is capable of deploying builds in addition to testing and developing projects. This tool highlights the areas where the development process needs to be improved. GitLab CI is typically a no-brainer for developers using the platform because they automatically receive seamless project integration.
Highlights:
- Docker support
- Easy configuration of the build server
- Runs parallel builds across multiple machines
- Available APIs for numerous features allow deep product integration
- An option to secure project data with Confidential Issues
- CircleCI
A platform for continuous integration and delivery is called CircleCI. It can be used in the cloud or locally and supports a variety of coding languages. Automated testing, building, and deployment are simple with this program. Numerous customization tools are included in its simple user interface. With CircleCI, developers can swiftly decrease the number of problems and raise the caliber of their apps. Despite being a for-profit product, CircleCI provides a free plan for open-source projects.
Highlights:
- Docker support
- Deep customization and easy scaling
- Rich integration options
- Advanced management interface
- Reliable build automation process
- Allows creating complex workflows
- Allows running numerous builds simultaneously
- TravisCI
The most effective CI tool for open-source projects is TravisCI. There are numerous choices for CI automation with this continuous integration platform. There is no requirement for a server because the service is hosted in the cloud. Additionally, TravisCI has an enterprise-focused on-premises version. The fact that this utility automatically backs up the most recent build each time you run a new one is one of its nicest features.
Highlights:
- Multiple languages and platforms support
- Automated deployment management and statistics
- Enterprise-grade access control
- Effortless GitHub synchronization
- Parallel testing
- Scaling capacity on demand
- Support of branch build flow and pull requests
Conclusion
On many projects, continuous integration is a crucial component of the development process. Some teams are still looking for a CI tool to add to their arsenal, though. Make sure to select the continuous integration tool that can best meet the needs of your project and business, while also accelerating and streamlining the development and delivery processes.
