Buddy (formerly Springloops) is a SVN/Git source code management tool focused on web development teams. It allows users to code in parallel and share code safely concentrating on results, not on lost changes or overwritten files. With quick deployments, users get rapid collaboration in protected space.
$75
per month
Jenkins
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Jenkins is an open source automation server. Jenkins provides hundreds of plugins to support building, deploying and automating any project. As an extensible automation server, Jenkins can be used as a simple CI server or turned into a continuous delivery hub for any project.
N/A
Kubernetes
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Kubernetes is an open-source container cluster manager.
I have used Spinnaker as a CD tool. Though it's a very powerful CD tool we still needed Jenkins for CI, so to save some hassle for us we opt Jenkins solely.
The big difference between Jenkins and other alternative tools is that Jenkins is open source and it’s free. Jenkins is very much about simple functionality. It’s a general CI tool that offers basic automation. It’s the most common CI tool on the market with a large community …
When looking for alternatives for Jenkins we found CircleCI and TeamCity are good too. Jenkins was considered for reasons like it has a wide variety of plugins which integrate well with any kind of system. And its ease of use.
One of the other greater advantage is it is open …
Jenkins immense flexibility and its large and impressive selection of available community-driven plugins makes it ideal choice for solving non-traditional problems.
However, for CI/CD - consider the benefit of modern tools that enforce reusable, infrastructure as code design …
Docker Swarm is not as advanced as Kubernetes and there are no out of the box solutions for auto scaling and deployment strategies. Docker swarm doesnot have much experience with production deployments at scale. Swarm has a smaller community, and less frequent releases as …
We already had an enterprise Kubernetes 8 set up, so once we got our namespace it took me about 2 weeks to go from not knowing anything to having a self-contained jar in a container, running on Kubernetes 8. In comparison, it took me two weeks to install Java on a blank server …
Springloops is the best tool for deployment to any environment. Especially, the auto-deployment feature on development servers is essential for the early stages of development. The built-in source control mechanisms are a perfect combination of ease of use and a rich feature set that allows the development team to have an easier and more complete view of each part of the project. A section that is lacking is time tracking - but then this is not the main usage of the service.
Jenkins is a highly customizable CI/CD tool with excellent community support. One can use Jenkins to build and deploy monolith services to microservices with ease. It can handle multiple "builds" per agent simultaneously, but the process can be resource hungry, and you need some impressive specs server for that. With Jenkins, you can automate almost any task. Also, as it is an open source, we can save a load of money by not spending on enterprise CI/CD tools.
K8s should be avoided - If your application works well without being converted into microservices-based architecture & fits correctly in a VM, needs less scaling, have a fixed traffic pattern then it is better to keep away from Kubernetes. Otherwise, the operational challenges & technical expertise will add a lot to the OPEX. Also, if you're the one who thinks that containers consume fewer resources as compared to VMs then this is not true. As soon as you convert your application to a microservice-based architecture, a lot of components will add up, shooting your resource consumption even higher than VMs so, please beware. Kubernetes is a good choice - When the application needs quick scaling, is already in microservice-based architecture, has no fixed traffic pattern, most of the employees already have desired skills.
Automated Builds: Jenkins is configured to monitor the version control system for new pull requests. Once a pull request is created, Jenkins automatically triggers a build process. It checks out the code, compiles it, and performs any necessary build steps specified in the configuration.
Unit Testing: Jenkins runs the suite of unit tests defined for the project. These tests verify the functionality of individual components and catch any regressions or errors. If any unit tests fail, Jenkins marks the build as unsuccessful, and the developer is notified to fix the issues.
Code Analysis: Jenkins integrates with code analysis tools like SonarQube or Checkstyle. It analyzes the code for quality, adherence to coding standards, and potential bugs or vulnerabilities. The results are reported back to the developer and the product review team for further inspection.
Local development, Kubernetes does tend to be a bit complicated and unnecessary in environments where all development is done locally.
The need for add-ons, Helm is almost required when running Kubernetes. This brings a whole new tool to manage and learn before a developer can really start to use Kubernetes effectively.
Finicy configmap schemes. Kubernetes configmaps often have environment breaking hangups. The fail safes surrounding configmaps are sadly lacking.
Apart from being a great versioning control system Springloops offers the options to automatically deploy code to multiple systems. This feature alone is a determining factor to renew Springloops over and over again. Another important factor is that it offers a full set of tools that help the team during the development cycle. No switching between time-tracking to project management. This is a real time-saver.
We have a certain buy-in as we have made a lot of integrations and useful tools around jenkins, so it would cost us quite some time to change to another tool. Besides that, it is very versatile, and once you have things set up, it feels unnecessary to change tool. It is also a plus that it is open source.
The Kubernetes is going to be highly likely renewed as the technologies that will be placed on top of it are long term as of planning. There shouldn't be any last minute changes in the adoption and I do not anticipate sudden change of the core underlying technology. It is just that the slow process of technology adoption that makes it hard to switch to something else.
Easy to use, automatic deployments, comments on projects are only a few factors. Multiple servers per project is another must-have feature. User permissions and rights offer granular control on access to the system
Jenkins streamlines development and provides end to end automated integration and deployment. It even supports Docker and Kubernetes using which container instances can be managed effectively. It is easy to add documentation and apply role based access to files and services using Jenkins giving full control to the users. Any deviation can be easily tracked using the audit logs.
It is an eminently usable platform. However, its popularity is overshadowed by its complexity. To properly leverage the capabilities and possibilities of Kubernetes as a platform, you need to have excellent understanding of your use case, even better understanding of whether you even need Kubernetes, and if yes - be ready to invest in good engineering support for the platform itself
No, when we integrated this with GitHub, it becomes more easy and smart to manage and control our workforce. Our distributed workforce is now streamlined to a single bucket. All of our codes and production outputs are now automatically synced with all the workers. There are many cases when our in-house team makes changes in the release, our remote workers make another release with other environment variables. So it is better to get all of the work in control.
I rarely use it but when I need it the team is there. During the initial steps of Springloops, I had close contact with one of the founders. He provided support to me over Skype! He didn't have to but he did. We had a couple of long talks about some issues I was facing. He has there regardless of time. It was a great experience
As with all open source solutions, the support can be minimal and the information that you can find online can at times be misleading. Support may be one of the only real downsides to the overall software package. The user community can be helpful and is needed as the product is not the most user-friendly thing we have used.
It is worth well the time to setup Jenkins in a docker container. It is also well worth to take the time to move any "Jenkins configuration" into Jenkinsfiles and not take shortcuts.
Springloops has a built-in feature that is lacking from Bitbucket (at least on the out-of-the-box functionality). Deployment of projects to various servers/development stages. The process is so easy and painless that even remote servers can act as local environments. This is a feature that differentiates Springloops from other solutions that require other tools to perform the same task.
Overall, Jenkins is the easiest platform for someone who has no experience to come in and use effectively. We can get a junior engineer into Jenkins, give them access, and point them in the right direction with minimal hand-holding. The competing products I have used (TravisCI/GitLab/Azure) provide other options but can obfuscate the process due to the lack of straightforward simplicity. In other areas (capability, power, customization), Jenkins keeps up with the competition and, in some areas, like customization, exceeds others.
Most of the required features for any orchestration tool or framework, which is provided by Kubernetes. After understanding all modules and features of the K8S, it is the best fit for us as compared with others out there.
