Best 7 CI/CD Tools You Must Know In 2024

You want products to be delivered faster. That’s exactly why more and more developers have started adopting DevOps methodologies and following agile methodologies. Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery are fast becoming an important part of software development to accommodate the rising expectations. The CI/CD tools that are there in the market provide developers with the necessary features to deploy the code continuously.

They are also adept at detecting bugs early, and thanks to the frequent committing of source code, the CI/CD tools help avoid integration problems too. Let us look at some of the most popular CI/CD tools that are used by programmers in 2024.

Top 7 CI/CD Tools in 2024

1. Bamboo:

Developed by Atlassian, it is a popular Continuous Integration tool. You can make use of it on popular platforms such as Linux, Windows, macOS. Released in 2007, it has a formidable combination of flexibility, easy graphical interface, organization, and CI/CD methodologies to offer a great experience during the creation of your build and deployment plans.

Features of Bamboo:

1. It has built-in integration with Bitbucket server and Jira.
2. You can self-host it as well as use its cloud-based variants
3. Integrate with popular tools such as AWS, Docker, etc.
4. Supports more than 100 remote build agents and even has the ability to parallel test batches on the agents.
5. Sends a continuous flow of build to test environments and automatically releases them to customers
6. It supports the databases Postgres, SQL server, Oracle and MySQL.
7. Allows for automated merging between Git and Mercurial branches.

2. Jenkins:

It is an open-source CI CD pipeline tool that is written entirely in Java. Jenkins allows for continuous integration and continuous delivery by automating parts related to build, test and deployment. By doing so, it makes it easy for developers to concentrate on bettering the product by integrating changes. It automates the software build in a continuous manner and lets the developers know about errors in the early stages of development.

Features of Jenkins:

• It uses automation testing frameworks such as PyTest, Selenium, Robot, Nose2, and more
• Jenkins executes test scenarios against various input combinations for better test coverage
• It uses build systems such as Gradle, Maven, and many more for software build
• The Jenkins community has more than 1500+ plugins which helps to customize the user’s experience
• Allows for easy setup and configuration via web interface
• Jenkins can easily distribute work to multiple machines, helping drive builds, including testing and deployment across multiple platforms

Also Read: Top Automation Testing Tools In Demand In 2024

3. Buildbot:

This CI testing framework is based on Python and it offers parallel execution of jobs across the platforms it supports. Companies like Animoto, Mozilla, Sotong Kitchen, etc. use Buildbot in their tech stack. Buildbot quickly and efficiently manages to find build issues by automatically rebuilding and testing each time a change is made.

Features of Buildbot:

• It runs build on different slave platforms
• Provides status delivery via email, web page, IRC, and other protocols
• It subclasses generic build process classes to provide flexible configuration
• It can be heavily customized with the help of its configuration file
• Buildbot inherits many of Python’s advantages such as a simple syntax and readability
• It is minimal when it comes to system requirements and doesn’t require separate resources

4. Travis CI:

It is a distributed continuous integration service which is used to build and test products that are hosted on GitHub. The tool can easily integrate with some of the most common cloud repositories such as Bitbucket and GitHub. You don’t require a dedicated server since Travis’ CI server is hosted in the cloud.

Features of Travis CI:

• You can run tests and generate results quickly, even parallel test execution is possible
• Travis CI integrates with HipChat, email, Slack, etc
• It makes sure that every Pull Request to your project is tested before the merging process
• You can perform parallel builds in different environments, languages and runtimes with the help of its build matrix feature
• Travis CI integrates with Azure, AWS, Kubernets, Google Cloud and many other cloud platforms
• It has the ability to identify small and large code changes

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5. CodeShip:

It is a cloud-based application development platform which is used to help organizations with continuous integration and deployment of applications. CodeShip is designed to fasten the release of software with the help of multiple and automated testing that is carried out on a regular basis. Since it reduces the development cycles, you can pave the way for innovation whilst developing products quickly.

Features of CodeShip:

• The tool supports parallel test pipelines
• It supports multi-stage builds that allows for the easy creation of builder workflows
• Allows for centralized team management with organizations and dashboards
• Builds run of pre-configured machines
• Supports a variety of integration options, including deployment tools, notification tools, security scanning tools, etc
• Supports multi-stage builds that are suitable for easy creation of builder workflows
• Makes setting up CI/CD easy because of its simple interface

6. GitLab CI:

Considered one of the best CI/CD tools as it comes with a bevy of features such as CI/CD continuous deployment, code reviews, and so on, all of this in a single dashboard. If you want to use the GitLab CI/CD, you can host the codebase in a Git repository. After this, all you need to do is specify the scripts in a YAML file titled .gitlab-ci.yml, to perform build, test and deploy.

Features of GitLab CI:

• By splitting a single build into multiple machines to reduce the build time, GitLab allows for parallel builds
• Migration to GitLab from any other tool is easy
• GitLab CI’s Shell Executor triggers builds
• It offers APIs to developers, thus allowing third-party developers to create much better integration with their products
• GitLab offers a convenient way to change the metadata of any issue or a merge request without having to add slash commands in the comment field

7. CircleCI:

It is a cloud-based offering that is considered as one of the best CI/CD tools that is suited specifically for open-source and large-scale projects. CircleCI is a flexible tool that can run on any cross-platform mobile app, Docker cluster, or Python API server. With this tool, you can automate your development process with continuous integration in their cloud or on your premises.

Features of CircleCI:

• The CircleCI platform enables the use of multiple executors in parallel to increase throughput
• It integrates with Bitbucket and GitHub, thus making it possible for development teams to test their code continuously
• CircleCI’s workflows makes it possible to increase the software development process through shorter reruns, faster feedback and efficient use of its resources
• Its caching feature reuses the data from fetch operations of previous jobs to make jobs faster
• Allows for automated merging and custom commands for package uploading

Conclusion:

We are hoping that you have a much better understanding of the most popular CI/CD tools that are used by programmers in 2024 after reading this article. When you are looking to choose a CI/CD tool, it is imperative that you check whether they offer on-premise and cloud-based options. You should also keep in mind the kind of user experience that these tools offer, if they allow for cross-browser testing, and so on.

If you think we have missed out on an important best CI CD tool, let us know in the comments section.

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