Jenkins VS Travis CI
Jenkins and Travis CI serve as continuous integration (CI) tools that allow developers to integrate code branches during the development process and run a series of automated tests against them. They both transform the time?consuming, manual task of building, testing, and deploying software into a fast, automated process.
When comparing Travis CI with Jenkins, we need to consider our business needs and budget.
Jenkins
Jenkins is the most popular open-source automation server that was written in a java programming language. It facilitates the automation process of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) in the software development process.
Jenkins supports over 1,400 plugins for other software tools. These plugins expand Jenkins into five years; platforms, UI, administration, source code management, and build management.
Jenkins is easy to install and use. It provides an impressive browser-hosted project management dashboard.
Some of the common reasons to evaluate and choose Jenkins are:
- Open-source and free
- Widely used and well documented
- Vibrant user community
- Integration with a large variety of tools and technologies.
- Plugin support
- Easy to install, configure and upgrade
- Distributed builds
- Monitoring external jobs
- Support for various authentication methods, notification, version control system, etc.
Travis CI
Travis CI was the first Continuous integration as a service tool. It introduced a new approach to build code in the cloud. Travis CI tool allows the user to sign up, link their repository, build, as well as test their apps.
This tool can easily integrate with the common cloud repositories like Bitbucket and GitHub. It offers many automated CI options which cut out the need for a dedicated server as the Travis CI server is hosted in the cloud. This allows us to test in different environments, on various machines, running on different operating systems.
For open-source projects, Travis CI is free. For commercial projects, we need to purchase an enterprise plan.
Some reasons to evaluate and choose Travis CI include:
- Automatic integration with GitHub
- Pre-installed build and test tools
- Repository access to build pull requests
- Provide services like databases, message queues, etc.
- Deployment to multiple cloud services
- Encrypt secure environment variables or files
- CLI client and API for scripting
- Support total of 21 languages like C, C#, C++, Android, Java, JavaScript (with Node.js), PHP, Perl, Python, R, Ruby, etc.
- The tool integrates with HipChat, Slack, Email, etc.
- It can identify small and large code changes.
- Build artifacts and check code quality
- In this, it is possible to run tests on Linux and Mac OS X simultaneously
Jenkins Vs. Travis CI Comparison Table
The following are the primary comparison between Jenkins and Travis CI:
| Jenkins | Travis CI |
|---|---|
| Jenkins is a software tool that allows CI (Continuous Integration). | Travis CI is distributed CI service to test and build the project at GitHub. |
| It is mainly written in Java. | It is mainly written in Ruby. |
| It is developed by Sun Microsystems and originally called Hudson | Travis CI is developed by Travis CI community. |
| Jenkins has full system control. | It has very less system control. |
| Jenkins supports multiple version control systems like GIT and SVN. | Travis CI supports only GitHub version control. |
| It supports all platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. | It does not support Windows. It only supports Linux and Mac. |
| Many plugins are available for Jenkins. | Supports less plugins and use in Travis CI. |
| Website of Jenkins is Jenkins.io | The website of Travis CI is Travis.ci.org |
| Jenkins is free. But the development team need to run and maintain their dedicated server. This could be considered an extra expense. | Travis CI enterprise suites start at $129/month. Cost increase based on the level of required support. |
| It is an open-source free to use the tool. | It is commercial CI tool. |
| It is easy to use. | It is flexible to use. |
| It is good for GitHub. | It is excellent for GitHub. |
| It is a server-based tool. | It is a cloud-based tool. |
| It provides more customizations options. | It provides less customizations options. |
| Jenkins is highly scalable. | Travis CI is less scalable as compared to Jenkins. |
| Jenkins can be hosted internally. | Travis CI cannot be hosted internally. |
| Jenkins has a lot of resources, great community support, tutorials. | Travis CI has only community support and tutorials, fewer resources. |
| Jenkins is mainly used by the top companies. | Travis CI is used by good companies but yet to reach to great companies. |
| Jenkins is easy to install and make the service up and running with one command line. | Travis CI is easier to configure with .travis.yaml file. |
Hence, with the above discussion, we can see that Travis CI and Jenkins both offer wonderful features. However, small open source projects are best suited for Travis CI as it is easy to run and quick to setup. On the other hand, the large enterprise is best suited to Jenkins, as it offers free licensing for a private project and a wide range of customizable feature. So, we can say that both of these CI tools are good in their way.