The integration of development and operation and maintenance opens a whole new chapter in software development. If you are new to
DevOps or are looking for ways to improve existing processes, the first level is to investigate which tools are best for your team.
This article organizes a list of tools to provide you with detailed reference information for choosing the tools you need. Let's take a look at the top ten
best DevOps tools from automated build tools to application performance monitoring platforms.
1. Gradle
The DevOps toolset requires a reliable build tool. Apache Ant and Maven have dominated the automated build tool market for many years, but Gradle appeared in 2009, and since then it has been growing steadily and growing in popularity. Gradle is very powerful, allowing users to program in Java, C ++, Python or other languages. Various popular IDEs such as Netbeans, Eclipse and Intellij IDEA also support Gradle. If this does not convince you to use it, then it may be helpful, Google also chose it as the official build tool of Andriod Studio.
Maven and Ant use XML configuration, and Gradle introduces a Groovy-based DSL to describe the build. In 2016, the Gradle team also released a Kotlin-based DSL, so users can now use Kotlin to write build scripts. This means that Gradle learning takes a certain amount of time. If you have used Groovy, Kotlin or other JVM languages before, it will help Gradle to master quickly. In addition, Gradle uses Maven's repository format, so if you have used Maven, you will also be familiar with Gradle's dependency management. You can also import Ant build into Gradle.
Gradle's best design is incremental build, so it can save a lot of compilation time. According to Gradle's performance report, it is 100 times faster than Maven. Part of this performance advantage comes from this incremental design, and it also benefits from Gradle's build cache and daemon. The build cache reuses task output, and Gradle's Daemon stores build information in memory, which can be shared among multiple builds.
Overall, Gradle makes fast delivery possible, and makes configuration more flexible.
2. Git
Git is one of the most popular DevOps tools and is widely used in the software world. It is a distributed SCM (source code management) tool, which is loved by remote teams and open source contributors. Git allows users to track the progress of their development work. Users can save different versions of their source code and switch back to the previous version when needed. It is also very suitable for experimentation, because you can create separate branches and only merge new features when needed.
To integrate Git and DevOps workflows, you also need to maintain a repository where team members can push their work. Currently, the two best online Git repo hosting services are GitHub and Bitbucket. GitHub is more famous, but Bitbucket provides free and unlimited private repo for small teams (no more than five members). With GitHub, users can only access public repo for free-of course this is still a good solution for many projects.
Both GitHub and Bitbucket are well integrated. For example, users can integrate them with Slack so that everyone on the team can be notified when there is any commit.
3. Jenkins
Jenkins is an automation tool that many software development teams will use when moving towards DevOps. It is an open source CI / CD server that helps users automate the different stages of the delivery pipeline. The main reason why Jenkins is popular is its huge plugin ecosystem. Currently, it provides more than 1,000 plugins, so it can integrate with almost all DevOps tools (from Docker to Puppet).
Using Jenkins, users can build and customize their own CI / CD pipeline according to actual needs. The following example is described in the Jenkins documentation. This is just one possible realization. It looks great, doesn't it?
Using Jenkins is easy, it works out of the box on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It can be easily installed using Docker. Users can build and configure the Jenkins server through a browser. If you are using it for the first time, you can choose to install the most commonly used plugins. Of course, you can also create a custom configuration.
With Jenkins, users can iterate and deploy new code as soon as possible. It also helps users measure the success of each step in the pipeline. I heard people complaining about Jenkins' "ugly" and not intuitive UI. However, I can still find everything I need easily.
4. Bamboo
Bamboo is Atlassian's CI / CD server solution, and many features are similar to Jenkins. They are all popular DevOps tools that help users automate release pipelines, from build to deployment. However, Jenkins is open source and Bamboo is charged. Therefore, the eternal question here is, is it necessary to choose paid software when there is free software? It depends on your funding and goals.
Bamboo has many pre-built functions, and these functions have to be built manually in Jenkins. This is why there are fewer plugins for Bamboo (about 100, Jenkins has 1000+). In fact, you don't need many plugins for Bamboo, because it comes with a lot of functions available out of the box.
Bamboo integrates seamlessly with other Atlassian products such as Jira and Bitbucket. Users can also access the built-in Git and Mercurial branch workflow and test environment. In short, Bamboo can save a lot of configuration time. Its UI is also more intuitive, with prompts, auto-completion and other useful features.
Please refer to
next article to learn the following 5 devops tools.
