Microsoft-owned GitHub just launched a new tool that helps developers release code faster, and competitors like Atlassian say it's a sign of an industry shift
- On Thursday, Microsoft-owned GitHub announced that it will now support CI/CD, the term for a set of automatic processes that allow developers to test and release code faster.
- With this release, GitHub joins companies like Atlassian, GitLab, CircleCI, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft itself, which all have similar tools.
- Competitors say that GitHub's product lacks certain specialized features that make it less compelling, but it's positive for the market overall as an entry-level way to get started with CI/CD.
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GitHub, the ubiquitous code hosting site owned by Microsoft that serves 40 million developers, announced Thursday that it now supports features that allow developers to release code faster and more often - a set of tools for which they had long been asking.
The new processes GitHub supports are known as continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment, jointly referred to as CI/CD. These features allow developers to automatically test and release their code as often as possible. The tools also include live logs of what's happening in an app, which can help with debugging.
With CI, when developers are ready to put their code into the main code base, it gets automatically tested with the click of a button. CD takes it a step forward by automatically releasing the code to users after it passes these tests. Altogether, it lets developers constantly push out new updates without needing to slow down to roll them out.
That's a big deal for GitHub, which hosts a huge chunk of the world's open source software projects. Users can spend more time writing code, rather than testing it, the company promises. And, as an added bonus, the social nature of GitHub means that users can see how others are using CI/CD in their own work.
"Because GitHub is the home of open source, one of the things that make it great is you can go to those open source projects and see how they're working and you can start to work like them," Jeremy Epling, senior director of product management at GitHub, told Business Insider.
GitHub's CI/CD features can support any programming language or platform, like macOS, Linux, or Windows. And even though GitHub is owned by Microsoft, Epling also says that the team made sure it works well with any cloud.
"Whether you want to deploy to Microsoft or AWS or Google or IBM's cloud, we want to make sure there's great support for all of that," Epling said. "It's open to everyone to go and integrate."
GitHub's CI/CD features can support any programming language or platform, like macOS, Linux, or Windows. And even though GitHub is owned by Microsoft, Epling also says that the team made sure it works well with any cloud.
"Whether you want to deploy to Microsoft or AWS or Google or IBM's cloud, we want to make sure there's great support for all of that," Epling said. "It's open to everyone to go and integrate."
'Starter pack'
With these new features, GitHub joins a host of other companies that are creating CI/CD software.
Investors are betting big on startups that create this software, like GitLab, LaunchDarkly, and CircleCI. Larger companies are creating CI/CD tools, too. For example, in 2016, $35 billion Aussie software giant Atlassian launched Bitbucket Pipelines. Google also has a tool called Cloud Build, Amazon Web Services has CodePipeline, and Microsoft's own Azure cloud has Azure Pipelines.
CircleCI, which is partnering with GitHub to make its tools compatible with the new service, has built its business around CI/CD software. CircleCI CEO Jim Rose says that GitHub's launch is a sign that CI and CD are "table stakes," and a new standard for getting work done.
"I think the way to think about that is the GitHub CI/CD product is really like a starter pack," Rose told Business Insider. "It's a way to get into the game."
In other words, Rose says, GitHub's CI/CD tools are basic, intended for GitHub's very broad audience. For users who end up wanting more, though, Rose says that CircleCI is a logical next step.
"[GitHub is] a solution that can kind of help get you started," Rose said. "What we have found with most products that are out there and most product partners, once you get to a certain size, you end up getting to a more dedicated solution."
The opposition
Sid Sijbrandij, CEO and co-founder of GitLab - a red-hot startup, which has long said that its focus on CI/CD tools sets it apart from the rest of the market - says that this shows that there will be room for fewer and fewer tools overall in the DevOps space. DevOps, a combination of "development" and "operations," is the term for the broader philosophy of releasing code quickly, of which CI/CD is a part.
In his view, where GitHub's product falls short is that it has features for testing and releasing code, sure, but not for monitoring that code and securing it against threats after it's deployed - something that GitLab has long made its stock in trade. He says that customers want one tool to handle the whole shebang, and GitHub is slowly moving in that direction.
"The industry long term will go to single applications that handle all of that," Sijbrandij told Business Insider. "What GitHub will need to do is learn how to manage the overlap with the market."
Noah Wasmer, Atlassian's head of technical teams, says GitHub's move into CI/CD is "good overall for the ecosystem." He says with Atlassian's own Bitbucket Pipelines, it has an advantage so-far unmatched by GitHub because it integrates with so many other major tools, including Atlassian's own Jira.
"It's good to see Microsoft come along," Wasmer told Business Insider. "Our unique approach to this open stack of tools is what resonates with developers who are looking for efficiency and optimizing for tools they care about the most."
In general, Wasmer sees an industry trend in engineers finding faster and more ways to release code, especially as companies move to the cloud. What Microsoft might want out of it, he suggests, is to get people more hooked on GitHub, which would in turn keep them away from alternative services.
"We really do believe in that workflow where developers can use the tools that they want," Wasmer said. "We see that slightly differently in the marketplace. Many times the agenda of some of our competition is to consolidate, to get people into their entire end-to-end solution."