Core Features
Concourse is engineered to be expressive, versatile, and secure, remaining intuitive even as your project complexity grows.
Code-based Configuration
resources:
- name: booklit
type: git
source: {uri: "https://github.com/concourse/booklit"}
jobs:
- name: unit
plan:
- get: booklit
trigger: true
- task: test
file: booklit/ci/test.yml
A Concourse pipeline functions like a
distributed, continuous Makefile.
Each job contains a build plan defining the job's input resources and what actions to perform with them when changes occur.
Visual Verification
Your pipeline appears visualized in the web UI, requiring just one click to move from a failed job to understanding the cause of failure.
The visualization provides immediate feedback: if it looks wrong, it probably is wrong.
A more complex example...
Jobs can depend on other jobs through
passed constraints. The
resulting network of jobs and resources creates a dependency graph that
continuously advances your project forward, from source code to
production.
Source-controlled CI
$ fly -t ci set-pipeline -p booklit -c pipeline.yml
$ vim pipeline.yml
$ fly -t ci set-pipeline -p booklit -c pipeline.yml
$ git add pipeline.yml
$ git commit -m "initial pipeline"
All configuration and management happens through the fly CLI.
The fly set-pipeline command uploads your configuration to Concourse. Once finalized, you can commit the file to source control, making it easy to recover your project if you migrate to a new Concourse server.
Reproducible, debuggable builds
$ fly -t ci intercept -j booklit/unit -s unit
root@2c15ff11:/tmp/build/0df9eea0# ps
PID TTY TIME CMD
171 pts/1 00:00:00 bash
1876 pts/1 00:00:00 ps
root@2c15ff11:/tmp/build/0df9eea0# ls
depspath gopathEverything executes in containers, ensuring a clean environment for each run.
Every task specifies its own image, providing complete control over its dependencies, instead of managing packages on your workers.
The fly intercept command lets you access a build's containers directly, simplifying troubleshooting of problematic builds.
Efficient local testing
~/booklit $ fly -t ci execute -c ci/test.yml
executing build 1 at http://localhost:8080/builds/1
initializing
booklit: 4.74 MiB/s 0s
running gopath/src/github.com/concourse/booklit/ci/test
fetching dependencies...
installing ginkgo...
running tests...
â–ˆThe fly execute command enables you to run builds with local modifications.
These builds execute exactly as they would in your pipeline, eliminating the need to push incomplete commits while debugging.
When a pipeline build fails, you can use
fly execute with the
-j flag to run a one-off build with the same inputs as
the failed build. You can then replace an input with your local
changes using -i to test your fix.
Custom integrations
resource_types:
- name: rubygem
type: registry-image
source:
repository: troykinsella/concourse-rubygems-resource
resources:
- name: rspec-gem
type: rubygem
source: {gem: rspec}
jobs:
- name: bundle
plan:
- get: rspec-gem
trigger: true
- # ...Concourse doesn't rely on a complex plugin system. Instead, it focuses on a single powerful abstraction: resources, which are implemented by resource types.
The
pipeline.resources
field configures external artifacts that your pipeline will monitor
for changes, retrieve, and update.
For instance, a resource with type gitrefers to a git
repository, which will be cloned in a
get step and pushed to using a
put step. Behind the scenes, Concourse
continuously runs git fetch to check for new commits that
jobs might want to trigger on.
At its foundation, Concourse has no built-in knowledge of
git. It includes a
git resource type
by default, but you can easily integrate your own into your pipeline
through the
pipeline.resource_types
field.