Product Overview of Buildkite
Buildkite is a cutting-edge Scale-Out Delivery Platform designed to address the complex challenges of modern software delivery, particularly at scale and with high complexity. It is utilized by some of the world’s most sophisticated and demanding software companies to build, test, and deploy software efficiently and securely.
Key Functionality
- Buildkite Pipelines: At the heart of the platform, Buildkite Pipelines is an advanced, scalable workflow orchestration engine. It automates the entire software delivery process from code commit to production, offering the flexibility to customize each stage according to specific needs. Pipelines support massive concurrency, allowing for unlimited build-agent concurrency, which significantly speeds up build times even with thousands of daily commits and massive codebases.
- Buildkite Test Engine: This component is a unified test suite platform for distributed, intelligent test execution and real-time insights. It scales with your testing needs, ensuring high velocity and increased confidence in your software delivery. The Test Engine includes features like real-time flaky test identification, test suite insights, and auto-quarantine of failing tests.
- Buildkite Package Registries: This feature is a powerful solution for managing software artifacts securely and efficiently at scale. It offers rapid package indexing, making software packages available to teams in seconds. Package Registries include SLSA level 1 signing, supply chain traceability, policy-based use of upstream registries, and upstream registry mirroring to prevent vulnerabilities and ensure smooth builds.
- Buildkite Mobile Delivery Cloud: This component is designed to supercharge mobile app delivery by addressing challenges such as development for multiple platforms, rapid development cycles, and strict app store requirements. It streamlines the mobile app delivery process, ensuring efficient and compliant deployments.
Key Features
- Unlimited Concurrency and Scalability: Buildkite allows for unlimited build-agent concurrency, enabling engineering teams to build software at unprecedented speeds without the limitations of traditional build systems.
- Composable and Flexible Architecture: The platform offers a composable, unopinionated architecture with scalable components that can be assembled to tailor the delivery system to specific business needs. This includes the use of an open-source build agent that keeps proprietary code and secrets secure within the customer’s environment.
- Hybrid Deployment Options: Buildkite supports hybrid deployment options, allowing users to run pipelines self-hosted in the cloud, multi-cloud, or on-premises. This provides unmatched flexibility and fine-grained control over where and how pipelines are executed.
- Security and Compliance: The platform embeds strict security and compliance policies, including single sign-on (SSO) with custom SCIM, SAML, and ADFS. It also allows for fine-grained permissions and boundaries to separate and isolate workflows based on organizational requirements.
- Advanced Visualization and Feedback: Buildkite provides advanced visualization tools, including a waterfall view of builds in a Gantt chart, job retries reports, and rich logs with emoji-laden annotations. These features help developers analyze build dependencies, timelines, and bottlenecks in real-time.
- Enterprise IT Integration: The platform seamlessly integrates with existing enterprise IT infrastructure, offering robust authentication, authorization, and single sign-on capabilities. It also includes web and lifecycle hooks, plugins, and an extensive ecosystem of third-party integrations.
Additional Capabilities
- Integration with AWS: Buildkite integrates with Amazon Web Services (AWS) through Amazon EventBridge, enabling the tracking of custom build metrics, monitoring developer wait times, and creating faster autoscaling rules. It also supports integrations with AWS Step Functions, AWS Lambda, Amazon S3, AWS Glue, and Amazon Athena for comprehensive event handling and data analysis.
- Priority Support and Tools: The platform includes priority email support and a range of tools to optimize pipeline performance, such as pause queues, job retries reports, and GitHub Enterprise and Bitbucket Server support.
In summary, Buildkite’s Scale-Out Delivery Platform is a comprehensive solution designed to empower engineering teams to deliver software rapidly, securely, and at any scale, making it an indispensable tool for modern software development.