Buddy (formerly Springloops) is a SVN/Git source code management tool focused on web development teams. It allows users to code in parallel and share code safely concentrating on results, not on lost changes or overwritten files. With quick deployments, users get rapid collaboration in protected space.
$75
per month
GoCD
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
GoCD, from ThoughtWorks in Chicago, is an application lifecycle management and development tool.
Springloops is the best tool for deployment to any environment. Especially, the auto-deployment feature on development servers is essential for the early stages of development. The built-in source control mechanisms are a perfect combination of ease of use and a rich feature set that allows the development team to have an easier and more complete view of each part of the project. A section that is lacking is time tracking - but then this is not the main usage of the service.
Previously, our team used Jenkins. However, since it's a shared deployment resource we don't have admin access. We tried GoCD as it's open source and we really like. We set up our deployment pipeline to run whenever codes are merged to master, run the unit test and revert back if it doesn't pass. Once it's deployed to the staging environment, we can simply do 1-click to deploy the appropriate version to production. We use this to deploy to an on-prem server and also AWS. Some deployment pipelines use custom Powershell script for.Net application, some others use Bash script to execute the docker push and cloud formation template to build elastic beanstalk.
Pipeline-as-Code works really well. All our pipelines are defined in yml files, which are checked into SCM.
The ability to link multiple pipelines together is really cool. Later pipelines can declare a dependency to pick up the build artifacts of earlier ones.
Agents definition is really great. We can define multiple different kinds of environments to best suit our diverse build systems.
Apart from being a great versioning control system Springloops offers the options to automatically deploy code to multiple systems. This feature alone is a determining factor to renew Springloops over and over again. Another important factor is that it offers a full set of tools that help the team during the development cycle. No switching between time-tracking to project management. This is a real time-saver.
Easy to use, automatic deployments, comments on projects are only a few factors. Multiple servers per project is another must-have feature. User permissions and rights offer granular control on access to the system
I rarely use it but when I need it the team is there. During the initial steps of Springloops, I had close contact with one of the founders. He provided support to me over Skype! He didn't have to but he did. We had a couple of long talks about some issues I was facing. He has there regardless of time. It was a great experience
Springloops has a built-in feature that is lacking from Bitbucket (at least on the out-of-the-box functionality). Deployment of projects to various servers/development stages. The process is so easy and painless that even remote servers can act as local environments. This is a feature that differentiates Springloops from other solutions that require other tools to perform the same task.
GoCD is easier to setup, but harder to customize at runtime. There's no way to trigger a pipeline with custom parameters.
Jenkins is more flexible at runtime. You can define multiple user-provided parameters so when user needs to trigger a build, there's a form for him/her to input the parameters.
Settings.xml need to be backed up periodically. It contains all the settings for your pipelines! We accidentally deleted before and we have to restore and re-create several missing pipelines
More straight forward use of API and allows filtering e.g., pull all pipelines triggered after this date
