Jenkins is by far the most widely used tool/platform used in DevOps. It is the automation workhorse for many an organization. Yet there are an issues with Jenkins that new wave of CI/CD tools address. This new code first CICD platforms like Gitlab CI, CircleCI, TravisCI, Etc. are well positioned to take on Jenkins workloads. But I am finding that many “DevOps” engineers really only know how work with Jenkins and its massive plugin eco-system. They do not understand what is really going on beyond how to fill out the particular plugin they require. Further, a bunch of so called DevOps Engineers do not have strong or even average scripting skills. They rely completely on Jenkins plugins to interconnect there jobs and pipelines. This is the main reason I believe Jenkins is a disease or maybe it’s an addiction which is a form of a disease.
I on the other hand, am looking for top grade ‘A’ talent and will not accept Jenkins addicted people. I am looking for DevOps folk that know how to integrate two platforms via rest api calls; curl with a side of jq, anyone! Now comes the problem these type of people are hard to come back. Especially, when you looking for a short term contractor, it is impossible, they are a unicorn of sorts. To push this further, dev teams also need to be willing and able to take on a tool like Gitlab CI as it is designed to be ‘pushed left’ to development teams and free release engineer to help enable the pipelines and do the coordination. To date, I am seeing that a good number of our dev teams are also unprepared to take on the power of a new age CICD pipeline platform.
This meanings I need to re-evaluate my choice of CICD backbones, was Gitlab CI right for us? That is the 20/20 hindsight questions, would we be the better off in the ignorance is bless state of Jenkins? Tool decisions are more about where we are today than where we want to be in the future. The Future is unwritten and thus unknown; the present is known. While we may see the future potential of one tool over the other, potential does not always pan out, ask Philly 76ers about Markel Fultz.
In the end, I think when choosing a CICD platform we need to evaluated not just the tools themselves but the teams and people that with be working with them. The culture of the company and so forth. Because we many end up with a Lamborghini when we need a mini-van.