Develop Faster with Continuous Integration & the Tools to Get the Job Done

Continuous Integration (CI) is a development practice where developers integrate code into a shared repository frequently, preferably several times a day. Each integration can then be verified by an automated build and automated tests. While automated testing is not strictly part of CI it is typically implied.

One of the key benefits of integrating regularly is that you can detect errors quickly and locate them more easily. As each change introduced is typically small, pinpointing the specific change that introduced a defect can be done quickly.

In recent years CI has become a best practice for software development and is guided by a set of key principles. Among them are revision control, build automation and automated testing.

Benefits and Advantages of Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration has many benefits. A good CI setup speeds up your workflow and encourages the team to push every change without being afraid of breaking anything. There are more benefits to it than just working with a better software release process. Continuous Integration brings great business benefits as well.

  • Reduces the time and effort for integrations of different code changes
  • Enables a quick feedback mechanism on every change
  • Allows earlier detection and prevention of defects
  • Helps collaboration between team members so recent code is always shared
  • Reduces manual testing effort
  • Building features more incrementally saves time on the debugging side so you can focus on adding features
  • First step into fully automating the whole release process
  • Prevents divergence in different branches as they are integrated regularly
Continuous Integration Tools

Jenkins

Jenkins is a cross-platform open source CI tool written in Java. It offers configuration through both the GUI interface and the console commands. Jenkins is a very flexible tool to use because it offers an extension of features through plugins. Its plugin list is very broad, and one can easily add their own plugins to that list. Furthermore, Jenkins can distribute software builds and test loads on several machines.

Travis CI

Travis CI is an open source CI service free for all open source projects hosted on GitHub. Since Travis CI is hosted, it is platform independent. It is configured using Travis.Yml files which contain actionable data. Travis CI supports a variety of software languages, and the build configuration for each of those languages is complete. Travis CI uses virtual machines to create applications.

TeamCity

TeamCity is a Java-based sophisticated CI tool offered by JetBrains. It supports Java,Net and Ruby platforms. TeamCity has a range of free plugins available developed both by JetBrains and third parties. It also offers integration with several IDEs including, Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio. Moreover, TeamCity allows simultaneous running of multiple builds and tests in different platforms and environments.

GitLab CI

GitLab CI is hosted on the free hosting service GitLab.com, and it offers Git repository management function with features such as, access control, bug tracking, and code reviewing. GitLab CI is completely unified with GitLab and it can easily be used to link projects using the GitLab API. GitLab CI process builds are coded in the Go language and can execute on several operating systems such as, Windows, Linux, Docker, OSX, and FreeBSD.

CircleCI

CircleCI is a CI tool hosted only on GitHub. It supports several languages, including Java, Python, Ruby/Rails, Node.js, PHP, Skala and Haskell. It offers services based on containers. CircleCI offers one container free, and any number of projects can be built on it. It offers up to five levels of parallelization (1x, 4x, 8x, 12x and 16x). Therefore, maximum parallelization of 16x can be achieved in one build. CircleCI also supports Docker platform.

Bamboo

Bamboo is a CI tool developed by Atlassian. Bamboo is available in two versions, cloud and server. For the cloud version, Atlassian offers hosting service with the help of Amazon EC2 account. For the server version, self-hosting needs to be done. Bamboo supports well known Atlassian products, JIRA and BitBucket.

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