Bamboo vs. JRebel

If you value integration over cost, Bamboo is clearly the way to go. It offers tight integration to the rest of the Atlassian suite, and when you need traceability from issue to build, Atlassian is the right way to go. However, if you find yourself needing to save on costs, you may consider taking an approach of rolling your own build system with open source alternatives, such as Jenkins, if you don't [mind] putting in a little extra elbow grease.

Incentivized

I recommend JRebel for Java developers, it will remove the time needed for redeployment, it will increase the focus on the task at hand (without being distracted by the redeployment) and will make them happier. I recommend JRebel for Java Development Managers, they should purchase this for their teams - it will increase productivity, decrease the product's time to market, and it will save money for the company. The ROI can be calculated upfront and presented to higher level management for approving this, if needed.

Incentivized

• Levels of granularity. Organization has many projects that have many build plans that have many jobs that have many tasks, etc. And branch builds allow source control branches to be built separately.
• Versatility. I can use bamboo to manage my Java, node, or .NET build plans. I can use it to spin up Windows or Linux build agents, or install it on a Mac to build there as well.
• Bamboo integrates with other Atlassian products like Bitbucket, Stash, JIRA, etc. If a company commits to the entire Atlassian stack then work can be tracked through the whole development lifecycle which is really useful.

Incentivized

• Deploys all layout changes consistently (when Instant Run was initially available, you couldn't tell if the change you made to a layout was actually being tested or not).
• Doesn't require a full build as often as Instant Run when changing code.
• Works with compile time annotation libraries like Realm, etc.

Incentivized

• Extremely hard barrier to entry for non-backend developers
• Blackbox makes it hard to customize functionality
• The inability to add features without breaking core functionality
• No cloud solution
• Tasks cannot be put in if/else statements
• No clear right way to form build plans

Incentivized

• It worked great, no big cons

Incentivized

Bamboo was fairly easy to navigate but in the end it always felt as if it was developed as a bolt-on and not a true group up user interface. There were multiple ways to get to everything and the path was never the same. So it was difficult for users to really get a feel of how to use the application.

The performance of JRebel is great. It is enabling the Java team to do hot re-deployments and it has to be transparent and fast for the user, otherwise the whole purpose of reducing wasted time with re-deployments doesn't make sense. Also the User Interface for License Server management and analytics loads fast and the navigation through pages is quick.

Incentivized

Support for Bamboo has started lack a little over the years. Atlassian has been moving more towards Bitbucket Pipelines and away from the on-premise install of Bamboo. While the tool is still great, it may take a little bit of time to get a question answered by official support.

We selected Bamboo because its capabilities to integrate with other Atlassian products specially Jira Software, Bitbucket and in some useful scenarios with Confluence. Also, we found these pros important for us: great user interface, easily agent deployment, Docker compability, simply to maintain / manage, and straightforwardly integration with different notification platforms

Incentivized

Hot code swapping doesn't have many players...it's mainly JRebel. We use JRebel a lot in our backend code development where it minimizes our development cycle (20min down to 30sec). For Android, the competitor is Android Studio's Instant Run which works fairly well now. For smaller apps, Instant Run is faster deploying but needs more full builds. With JRebel, you hardly ever need to do a full build.

Incentivized

• It helped us achieve the Continuous Deployment and Continuous Integration goals for our applications, a huge milestone that saved a lot of time for developers in making the builds and deployments and saved time for QA in running the automated tests.
• Helped with DevOps: we moved the formal approval from the email to the system and allowed the approver to actually push the button for the production deployments.
• Biggest positive impact of using Bamboo is that it improved our response time to customers and increased the frequency of our deliveries to them.

Incentivized

• It sped up the developing time, and time is money for the company.

Incentivized