When comparing GitLab CI vs Shippable, the Slant community recommends GitLab CI for most people. In the question“What are the best continuous integration tools?” GitLab CI is ranked 2nd while Shippable is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose GitLab CI is:
All build setup are stored in .gitlab-ci.yml file, which is versioned and stored in the project. Like Travis do.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro File based configuration
All build setup are stored in .gitlab-ci.yml file, which is versioned and stored in the project. Like Travis do.
Pro Free and open source
All of GitLab CI's code is open source and under the MIT license.
Pro Parallel builds lessen test times
Tests are parallelized across multiple machines in order to reduce test times considerably.
Pro Docker intergration
Good integration with Docker.
Pro Highly scalable
The tests of GitLab CI run parallel to each other and are distributed on different machines. Developers can add as many machines as they want or need, making GitLab CI highly scalable to the development team's needs.
Pro Quick setup for projects hosted on GitLab
Since it uses the GitLab API for setting up hooks, the setup of GitLab CI for projects hosted on GitLab can be done in one click.
Pro Kubernetes integration
Easy to test and deploy on Kubernetes.
Pro Builds are faster
The fact that Shippable runs inside of Docker means that it keeps a persistent state and every build will not have to revert to initial state where it needs to install every dependency from the ground up. Classic CI tools that run on virtual machines need to reset their environment every time and every time install the gems, packages and services needed.
Pro GitHub and Bitbucket integration
Shippable supports both BitBucket and GitHub. Repositories uploaded on either of those services can be built using Shippable.
Pro Free plan available
Unlimited builds for unlimited public repos and up to 5 private repositories.
Pro Docker integration
Shippable is built using Docker, a popular open source Linux container. It was originally built using it's own container but when that started to become too complex, they switched to using Docker. Since the beginning Shippable was different from other CI tools because while Shippable uses a container (Docker), traditionally CI tools have used virtual machines to manage their workloads.
Pro Quick setup
All Shippable needs for it's setup is a shippable.yml
file in the root of the repository that needs to be built. The bare minimum Shippable needs is the language and the version number specified in that file.
Pro Integrated code coverage and test results visualization
No need to use coveralls or any other tool for code coverage visualization. Code coverage and test results are integrated into the product.
Pro Build as Code
Builds are described in the shippable.yml file located in the root of your project. This empowers engineers to take responsibility for code delivery. If you are coming from Travis CI, Shippable reads your .travis.yml file directly so you can try it out painlessly.
Pro Build on your own host
Teams can set up Docker containers on their own servers and run Shippable in there.
Pro Supports monitoring and tracking utilization and system performance for your devops automation infrastructure
Pro Cheaper than competitors
Plans are significantly cheaper than competitors.
Pro Testing against multiple runtimes, versions and environments
Supports builds against multiple runtimes, environment variables, and platforms.
Pro 2X faster than any other platform
The accuracy & speed is 2x more compared to all the other available CI & CD platforms.
Cons
Con Not lightweight
Not a lightweight solution, demanding and memory hungry.
Con Cost
Larger projects will need upgraded version
Con Security risks
Con Windows not supported
No Windows support, but it's possible to use a Bitnami stack.
Con Requires way to much permissions when logging in using Bitbucket
It even requests the permission to "Delete your repositories".
Con No Direct Deploy to S3
Currently, Shippable does not allow for build artifacts to be natively deployed to S3. This can be gotten around, however it is a rather large hole when compared to Travis.
In order to deploy to S3 you have to add a couple of lines to the yml file. For example:
env:
global:
#secure variable contains values for AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
- secure: HKwYujx/qmsyQQdHvR2myu8HLUDtcLeDyYV149YJuxIV4J7Hk3SxeY8X3D6aTlR8mvMnd/ZFY+tGNUh4G0xtLLjjZcPsBgvFlB
build:
on_success:
- aws s3 sync $SHIPPABLE_BUILD_DIR "s3://bucket_name" --region "us-east-1"
Con Docker security measures may be a hindrance
Shippable runs inside Docker containers. Docker has some specific security measures which may or may not become a hindrance in using Shippable. It may be harder for users who are not very comfortable with a Linux container environment and that can create some security problems. Even for more advanced users, it's still something more that they have to address while using Shippable.