In the field of the engineering community, it is necessary to understand the best tools that are better for the needs and requirements of the project. Thus, for this, the very first step that needs to be understood is grasping the value of continuous integration and continuous delivery tools.
The following blog is all about depicting and sharing the pros and cons of CI/CD tools or to say it more clearly we can say between Azure DevOps v/s Jenkins. But before proceeding with the actual work, let us all understand the difference between CI and CD tools.
Continuous Integration (CI) is a development practice where development teams make small, frequent changes to code. Each integration is verified by an automated build (including test) to detect integration errors as quickly as possible.
Continuous delivery (CD) is actually an extension of CI, in which the software delivery process is automated further to enable easy and confident deployments into production at any time.
Now let us proceed further and share with you the details between the two.
Azure Pipelines
Azure Pipeline is a service that caters to the need for creating pipelines on the Azure Cloud Platform. It is entirely supporting the work of continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD), hence constantly and consistently tests and builds your code and deploys it to any target by defining a pipeline.
Pros:
- Usability (Great User Interface) — Being a new user, it is easy to pick up and go with this tool. We can start with the classic editor which provides an intuitive GUI to create and visualize the integration steps. Later, the user can define those very same steps in YAML. Hence, we can define the pipeline using two features i.e. Classic Editor and YAML.
- Categorized Built-in Tasks — The tasks are categorized based on the nature of the operation. Ex: Build tasks, Utility tasks, Deploy tasks, etc. This makes it easy for the user to add the desired/specific tasks to their pipeline.
- Group Tasks — It allows you to encapsulate a sequence of tasks, already defined in a pipeline, into a single reusable task, just like any other task.
- Request and Add Tasks to your Pipelines — It has a lot of build-in tasks, yet you can download extensions/tasks from the Azure DevOps marketplace.
- Microsoft Hosted Agents — Azure Pipelines offers cloud-hosted build agents for Linux, Windows and macOS build. You can have a look at what software is installed.
- Any language, any platform, any cloud — Build, test, and deploy Node.js, Python, Java, PHP, Ruby, C/C++, .Net, Android, and iOS apps. Run in parallel on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Deploy to Azure, AWS, GCP or on-premises
- Azure Pipelines — Provide unlimited build minutes to all open-source projects and up to 10 concurrent jobs across Windows, Linux, and macOS.
- Azure Pipeline — Analytics are provided at the end of each run with parameters like rate and duration of the run.
Cons
- Integration with non-Microsoft is difficult — Azure DevOps should provide easier integration with other product lines to improve acceptability.
- Azure Pipeline — Workflow is straightforward (can’t set if-else or switch-case constructions). This makes it more difficult to develop complex workflows.
- The deprecated tasks/extensions — They are not removed from the marketplace.
- Documents are not Up To Date.
Jenkins
A Jenkins Pipeline is a suite of plugins that supports implementing and integrating continuous delivery pipelines into Jenkins.
Pros
- Jenkins is an open-source, easy to install, and free.
- Platform Independent — Available for all platforms and different operating systems, whether Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux.
- Rich Plugin — Jenkins comes with a wide range of plugins.
Cons
- Outdated or Old UI — Its interface here seems to be an older version of an outdated version which is not at all not user friendly as it doesn’t follow modern design principles.
- Scripted Pipelines — Must be programmed in Groovy.
- Though it’s rich in Plugin, a lot of plugins are not straightforward or unstable — Even for basic tasks, plugins need to be installed.
- There’s no YAML interface for Jenkins Pipelines.
- Jenkins doesn’t provide any analytics. It is that they are basically the plugins, but the fact is that it is not at all enough at the end of the run.
- Needs better, precise, and accurate documentation.
Over To You:
We at Cloud Stack Group is the one-stop destination that works with the clients closely to provide them the best service which is for the betterment of both of them. Knowing the current market trend and needs we share the details with our clients that gives a long term business profit to the clients.
With this also our aim is to build a strong business relationship and be with the customer to provide them support all 24*7 and 365 days a year. Feel free to contact us today to know more about our services, ways, and concept of working, and based on that decide which service is best for your business.
