Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Google Cloud Build

Google has a firm grip on the desktop. Its products and services are everywhere. We’ve been long-standing admirers of many of them. They’re often polished, easy to use and seemingly free. But relying heavily on a single company has drawbacks. Google’s approach to privacy, data collection and the wider reach of its ecosystem continues to concern many users.

If you want to loosen Google’s grip, there are plenty of alternatives. This series looks at ways to replace Google products and services with free and open source software without giving up useful functionality.

Google Cloud Build is a managed build service running on Google Cloud infrastructure. It can pull source code from repositories or cloud storage, execute a series of build steps, and produce artifacts such as container images and Java archives.

Build steps run in containers. You can use builders supplied by Google and the community, or create your own. Builds can also be triggered automatically when code changes, making Cloud Build useful for continuous integration and delivery.

Google Cloud Build is proprietary software. Here are our recommended free and open source alternatives.

1. Woodpecker

Woodpecker is a lightweight CI/CD engine aimed squarely at self-hosting.

Its approach should feel familiar to Cloud Build users. Pipeline steps run in containers and configuration is normally stored alongside the source code in YAML files. Webhooks can launch pipelines when code is pushed, a pull request is opened or a tag is created.

Steps can use ordinary container images, while plugins add support for common jobs such as deployment, artifact publishing and notifications. A repository can contain multiple workflows, and dependencies can be set between them.

Woodpecker supports Docker and Kubernetes backends. There’s also support for secrets, matrix builds, service containers and private registries.

The obvious difference is that Woodpecker leaves the infrastructure in your hands. That means more administration than Cloud Build, but it also means the CI/CD system is under your control.

2. Tekton

Tekton is a vendor-neutral framework for building CI/CD systems on Kubernetes.

Tekton Pipelines adds custom resources to Kubernetes for describing CI/CD workflows. Tasks contain individual steps, while Pipelines join Tasks together into larger build, test and deployment processes.

Everything is built around containers. Tasks can call compilers, test suites, image builders, deployment tools and just about anything else that can run in a container.

Tekton makes most sense if Kubernetes is already part of your infrastructure. Pipelines are not tied to Google Cloud, so the same definitions can be used on your own Kubernetes cluster or with another cloud provider.

It is nowhere near as hands-off as Cloud Build. You need to operate the Kubernetes environment yourself. But for organisations that already have that expertise, Tekton offers a great deal of flexibility without locking the build system to one cloud.

3. Concourse

Concourse is a container-based automation system widely used for CI/CD.

Concourse has its own distinct way of doing things. Pipelines are constructed from resources, tasks and jobs, with a strong focus on reproducible builds and declarative configuration.

Tasks run in isolated containers, helping to keep build environments clean and predictable. Pipeline definitions can live in version control, while the fly command-line tool is used to configure pipelines and work with the server.

Resources are one of Concourse’s defining features. They represent things a pipeline consumes or produces, such as source repositories and container images. Changes to a resource can also trigger jobs.

It doesn’t mirror Cloud Build’s architecture, but it tackles many of the same jobs. Concourse is particularly appealing if reproducibility and portable pipeline definitions rank highly on your list.

4. Jenkins

Jenkins needs little introduction. It is one of the longest-established open source automation servers and can cover practically every part of the build, test and deployment process.

It is a much broader tool than Cloud Build. Jenkins can be used as a relatively simple CI server, but it is equally capable of sitting at the centre of a large and complicated automation setup.

Pipelines can be stored with the source code in a Jenkinsfile. Jobs can be started by changes in source repositories, distributed across multiple machines and used to run almost any build tool, script or deployment process.

The enormous plugin ecosystem remains one of Jenkins’ main strengths. There are integrations for source control, container platforms, cloud services, build systems, authentication, notifications and much more.

That flexibility brings extra maintenance. Jenkins installations need looking after, particularly when plugins and workers are involved. Cloud Build hides much of that work. Jenkins does not.

For users who value control and extensibility over a fully managed service, that trade-off may be well worth making.

5. Buildbot

Buildbot is a Python-based framework for automating build, test and release workflows.

Buildbot is less prescriptive than many CI systems. Instead of forcing projects into a rigid pipeline model, it provides components that can be combined into a CI setup tailored to the job at hand.

Configuration is written in Python. That gives administrators considerably more freedom than systems built almost entirely around static YAML files, particularly when workflows need custom logic.

Buildbot uses a master and worker architecture. The master coordinates the work, while workers carry out the builds. More workers can be added to spread jobs across different operating systems, architectures and test environments.

It can watch source repositories for changes and automatically start builds. Individual steps can compile code, run tests, package software and execute whatever other commands are needed.

Buildbot is not the closest match to Cloud Build in this group. Its appeal lies elsewhere. If your build or test setup is unusual, highly customised or spread across many different environments, Buildbot gives you plenty of room to shape the system around your requirements.

All articles in this series:

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