This page details and compares available CI-as-a-Service (CISaaS) platforms for open source communities. Though there is no free SaaS provider for Jenkins, it is included in the comparison as that is what most LFN projects are currently using.
Work in progress as I (Trevor Bramwell ) compile research and slides from multiple presentations.
SCM Support by Platform
This table details the support for CI systems to report back the status of builds to SCM providers.
| Gerrit | Github | GitLab | Bitbucket | Azure Code | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jenkins |  | | | | |
| CircleCI | | | |||
| Azure Pipelines | | | | ||
Drone.io | | ||||
| Github Actions | | ||||
| GitLab-CI | | | † |
† https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/ci_cd_for_external_repos/bitbucket_integration.html
Note: a similar approach could be used for other SCMs provided there is an API for updating CI status
Build Resources and Minutes
Builds, agents, runners: these are all different names providers use to refer to the compute machine CI/CD builds run on.
| Builder Size | ARM Builders | External Builders | Platform Support | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jenkins | N/A | N/A | Yes | All |
| CircleCI | 2 vCPUs, 4-8 Gb RAM, larger sizes | Yes/No | All | |
| Azure Pipelines | 2 vCPUs, 7 Gb RAM | Yes | All | |
Drone.io | N/A | Yes | Yes/No | Linux |
| Github Actions | 2 vCPUs, 7 Gb RAM | Yes | All | |
| GitLab-CI | 1 vCPU, 3.75 Gb RAM | Yes | Linux |
Platform Support 'All' means support for Linux, OSX, Windows.
External Builders 'Yes/No' means external hardware is supported in the self-hosted (non SaaS) version.
Notes on Other Systems
There are several other CI SaaS platforms out there not included in this comparison for various reasons.
- Travis-CI
After the majority of senior staff was laid off when the company was acquired, Travis-CI has essentially been put into standby mode. No new major feature or changes are expected. - Bitbucket Pipelines
Bitbucket Pipelines requires code be hosted in Bitbucket and only provides 50 free minutes per-month for open source projects. - Appveyor
Originally the only place to get free Windows builds. There's little need to use them when Azure Pipelines provides all-if-not-more of the same services.