HashiCorp Packer automates the creation of machine images, coming out of the box with support to build images for Amazon EC2, CloudStack, DigitalOcean, Docker, Google Compute Engine, Microsoft Azure, QEMU, VirtualBox, and VMware.
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Travis CI
Score 7.3 out of 10
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Travis CI is an open source continuous integration platform, that enables users to run and test simultaneously on different environments, and automatically catch code failures and bugs.
There are lot of tools in market which does the job for Image creation but all of them are not complete Machine/Image as a code. All other alternatives can create Image partially.
Jenkins is probably the leading choice for automation and has loads of features and a large community behind it, but it can be overkill for many projects. It also has more of a web 1.0 look and interface. CircleCI is another similar big competitor, but cannot compete with Travis …
There are a few other options out there, CircleCI, Codeship and Wrecker would be a few good ones I can also recommend, each one has its particularity but I believe Travis has the best interface and flexibility of all of them. I'd recommend trying them all and seeing which one …
Jenkins is much more complicated to configure and start using. Although, one you have done that, it's extremely powerful and full of features. Maybe many more than Travis CI. As per TeamCity, I would never go back to using it. It's also complicated to configure but it is not …
There are a number of alternatives to Travis CI, but Travis remains the most popular, since it was one of the first to show up. It has a lot of examples, support for building dozens of languages, and good documentation. Significant portions of the system are open source, so you …
We use packer to generate new machine images for multiple platforms on every change to our Configuration Management tools like Chef/Puppet/Ansible It's act single tool for Image building for Multi-provider like AWS/Azure/GCP Helps to achieve Dev/Prod Parity Packer itself doesn't have a state like Terraform. You can't do packer output AMI ID. If you have a scenario where you want to maintain the state for images it would be tough to manage via Packer.
TravisCI is suited for workflows involving typical software development but unfortunately I think the software needs more improvement to be up to date with current development systems and TravisCI hasn't been improving much in that space in terms of integrations.
It's simple and easy to get started (it can detect the language being used based on build configuration files like a Maven pom.xml).
It's free (as in beer) for open source projects.
It has a responsive staff (you can file issues on GitHub to ask for new languages or packages to be supported, and the turnaround time isn't too bad for the free offering).
The user interface is beautiful and easy-to-use, including features like live-tailing in-progress builds.
It supports specifying private environment variables and encrypted credentials, so that you can safely automate deployments (for example, pushing built docker images to DockerHub).
Travis CI is a fairly mature platform now, and most, if not all of the common complaints have been improved. This includes documentation and logs with color support.
TravisCI hasn't had much changes made to its software and has thus fallen behind compared to many other CI/CD applications out there. I can only give it a 5 because it does what it is supposed to do but lacks product innovation.
After the private equity firm had bought this company the innovation and support has really gone downhill a lot. I am not a fan that they have gutted the software trying to make money from it and put innovation and product development second.
There are lot of tools in market which does the job for Image creation but all of them are not complete Machine/Image as a code. All other alternatives can create Image partially. Main reason for selecting Packer are Packer is lightweight, portable, and command-line driven Packer helps keep development, staging, and production as similar as possible. Packer automates the creation of any type of machine image Multi-provider portability is the feature to die for
Jenkins is probably the leading choice for automation and has loads of features and a large community behind it, but it can be overkill for many projects. It also has more of a web 1.0 look and interface. CircleCI is another similar big competitor, but cannot compete with Travis CI's free account [in my opinion].