Azure DevOps vs GitHub
Azure DevOps vs GitHub
Azure DevOps and GitHub are
both developer collaboration tools owned by Microsoft. Despite these
similarities, the two DevOps tools are far from interchangeable. Developers in
need of a software collaboration and sharing platform should be aware of the
differences between Azure DevOps and GitHub before selecting one over the
other.
What is Azure DevOps?
Azure DevOps is a
collection of Azure developer services intended to help developers build
software by streamlining planning, collaboration, communication and deployment
of new projects.
The individual services
that make up the DevOps suites can be used on their own or in combination with
each other. Integrated services include Azure Pipelines, Azure Repos and Azure
Test Plans.
What is GitHub?
GitHub is a popular website
and cloud-based service that allows developers to store and share their code as
well as track and manage code changes. Key features of GitHub include version
control through Git, an open-source distributed version control system that
helps to facilitate the branching and merging of projects.
With Git, the entire
codebase and history of a project will be available on every developer’s
computer, which is why branching and merging with Git is so easy.
Because Git is so widely
adopted in the software development community, a cloud-based Git repository
hosting service like GitHub is a great way to ensure that projects are
accessible to other developers.
Azure DevOps vs GitHub:
Feature comparison
Feature Azure DevOps GitHub
CI/CD Yes Yes
Code repositories Yes Yes
Agile tools Yes No
Common features of Azure
DevOps and GitHub
Intended users and use
cases
Azure DevOps is seen as an
enterprise solution for the development of closed-source software: Even
Microsoft hosts most of its open-source projects on GitHub.
GitHub, by contrast, is
beloved in the open-source community. You’ll find that many open-source
projects will have a GitHub repository. For developer teams working on an open-source
project, a GitHub repository is a good way to make the project as accessible as
possible to the open-source community.
GitHub and Azure DevOps
will integrate nicely with popular tools, platforms and services. For example,
both Azure DevOps and GitHub integrate with Microsoft Azure. Developers who
want to take advantage of Azure’s security offerings, the product of
partnerships with cybersecurity firms like Coalfire, can use either GitHub or
Azure DevOps with the cloud service platform.
Continuous integration and
continuous deployment support
Both Azure DevOps and
GitHub have their own automation and CI/CD tools — Azure Pipelines and GitHub
Actions, respectively. These two tools both support hosted agents for public
and private projects.
GitHub Actions does not
offer some of the features users have with Azure Pipelines. For example, GitHub
Actions does not support scale set agents — self-hosted agents that can
automatically scale to meet the needs of a project — unlike Azure Pipelines.
Project management features
Azure DevOps offers a
robust selection of project management tools and features, including agile
tools that will help support agile developer teams.
GitHub offers a project
management platform, GitHub Projects, that exists primarily to support project
management for code that is already on GitHub.
Azure DevOps will work with
a wider variety of projects than GitHub, as the GitHub Projects platform will
only support projects that keep their code on GitHub. Both tools, however,
offer robust project management features and can help developers keep their
projects organized.
Which is the better
developer collaboration tool?
Both Azure DevOps and
GitHub are powerful tools for developer teams that need to facilitate
communication, ensure collaboration and manage their projects.
GitHub will be the best
option for developers of open-source projects, as the platform’s features will
help make their project the most accessible to the open-source community. For
developers of closed-source projects, Azure DevOps provides a robust and mature
feature kit that will help streamline collaboration and communication.
It’s also possible to
integrate Azure DevOps with GitHub using official DevOps features — meaning
that some teams may be able to simply adopt both solutions — though it’s
important to remember that Azure DevOps and GitHub aren’t interchangeable, even
though they provide similar features.
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