JetBrains Launches CI/CD Tool for Small, Mid-Sized Dev Teams
CI/CD tools can be quite complex, in part because they’re designed to support the needs of big development shops with potentially hundreds of developers working on a project. A new solution from IDE provider JetBrains simplifies the CI/CD pipeline user interface for small- and mid-sized teams while still giving smaller teams the flexibility to add more features.
Supporting enterprise teams is different than supporting a small team of maybe five to a dozen developers, who probably need more access rights but fewer bells and whistles, explained Marco Behler, JetBrains product manager of the solution.
Beta Tool Targets Smaller Teams
JetBrains launched the new CI/CD tool, called TeamCity Pipelines, in beta today. The IDE provider is betting that smaller teams need less complexity and more recommendations out of the box.
“They just need less complexity or less options, more recommendations, out of the box,” Behler said. “You might want to think about it in terms of an iPhone where there’s a good specific set of default options instead of having 20,000 options to choose from. And that’s why, yes, smaller teams would need something simpler than the big hammer where you have a crazy amount of optimization options.”
Larger CI/CD solutions also require dedicated staff members 24/7 just to administer the pipelines, but smaller teams have to manage all that themselves. It can be overkill for them, he said.
It’s not that smaller teams might not need the same tools — they may. It’s more that they won’t need all of the same tools. To accommodate the fact that needs vary by team, the TeamCity Pipelines tool is built on the same platform as its enterprise solution, he explained. If a small team needs specific features, then it can be added to the UI, which is streamlined and simplified compared to the enterprise tools, Behler said.
“We take a new approach where we say, let’s reduce the complexity in the UI and offer users just a much more streamlined, simpler UI,” Behler said. “If we find out later on that users need a specific feature, then we will add it obviously to that simpler UI, but we’re just trying to think about it from scratch. There’s the minimal set of user features that will bring the most value to users, and not overload them straight from the beginning.”
Tool Automates Adding New Features
It’s simple to adjust the UI because the CI/CD pipeline tool automates suggesting features the team may want via smart popups that offer to turn on features as the need arises. It will offer features at all stages of the pipeline, including during the running and debugging stages, he added.
“We analyze the scripts and tell the user, ‘Hey, if you’re running these specific commands, you might want to turn off a specific feature and pipelines because, for example, [it] gives you additional reporting,’” he said.
It also provides automation for integrating code changes. Once the pipeline is set up and configured, it will automatically check out the new code changes, immediately trigger new builds, run through the pipeline and build the artifacts for the application, he explained.
Being able to analyze the pipeline after it’s run and offer automated suggestions for improvement is simpler than, say, copying and pasting 20,000 YAML files together for the same configuration and functions, he said. While TeamCity Pipelines does support YAML files, the automation of configuration is a key differentiator between JetBrain’s solution and existing solutions for small teams, Behler pointed out.
The tool is free while in beta, which is expected to last for a few months, but JetBrains plans to offer a free tier with “plenty of build credits.” It will be generally available by fall, Behler added.
The majority of companies with more than a handful of developers use some sort of CI/CD tool, according to Behler — even on the frontend, where CI/CD tools can help make sure there’s no breakages in the front- or backend.
“It just makes sense to have some sort of CI/CD tool so that you understand that everything works as expected and is built as expected,” he said. “You can still pull it off manually, in terms of … they could just run and build everything themselves on their machines. But a CI/CD tool usually pays off because it’s all being done ultimately for you.”
