What are common CI/CD tools? · IT Interview Practice

What are common CI/CD tools?

Many tools implement CI/CD pipelines — GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, CircleCI, and others. They automate building, testing, and deploying code. Understanding the landscape and how they're configured is practical knowledge.

Common CI/CD tools

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GITHUB ACTIONS → CI/CD built into GitHub; YAML workflows in the repo; huge marketplace
  of reusable actions; popular for GitHub-hosted projects (easy, integrated)
GITLAB CI/CD → built into GitLab; .gitlab-ci.yml; integrated with GitLab's DevOps platform
JENKINS → the classic, self-hosted, highly-extensible (plugins) automation server;
  flexible/powerful but more setup/maintenance
CIRCLECI, TRAVIS CI → cloud-based CI/CD services
AZURE DEVOPS, AWS CodePipeline, Google Cloud Build → cloud-provider CI/CD
ArgoCD, Flux → GitOps continuous deployment for Kubernetes

yaml

# example: GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/ci.yml)
name: CI
on: [push, pull_request]      # triggers
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4         # check out code
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4        # set up Node
      - run: npm install                   # install deps
      - run: npm test                      # run tests
      - run: npm run build                 # build

text

→ GitHub Actions if you're on GitHub (integrated, easy); GitLab CI if on GitLab
→ Jenkins for maximum flexibility/control or self-hosting (at the cost of maintenance)
→ Cloud-provider tools if deeply invested in that cloud
→ Most do the same core job; choose by platform, ecosystem, and needs.

What are common CI/CD tools?

Common CI/CD tools

How they're configured (pipeline as code)

Choosing a tool

Why it matters