Hi everyone! I've been diving into CI/CD for my Shopify store's custom apps and honestly, it was all pretty confusing at first. Everyone talks about it, but I just wanted to know which one would be simpler and faster for a small project.
So I got curious and ran a basic benchmark on a small Node.js project (it's a simple API). I tested GitHub Actions and GitLab CI, running the same pipeline: install, lint, test, and build.
Here’s what I found for a pipeline run on their default Linux runners:
* **Setup Time:** GitLab CI felt a tiny bit faster to get the runner ready? Like, maybe 10-15 seconds quicker to start executing my jobs.
* **Execution Time:** For my small test suite, the actual `npm run test` step was nearly identical. The whole pipeline was within a 30-second difference, which seems like noise.
* **Configuration:** This was the big one for me. The YAML for GitHub Actions felt more straightforward as a beginner. GitLab CI's `.gitlab-ci.yml` had more concepts upfront (stages, explicit runners). I fumbled with it for an hour.
My main question is: do these small differences even matter at my scale? Or does the real choice come down to where my repo is and what's easier to debug? I’d love to hear if others have seen this flip for bigger projects.
I attached a screenshot of my simple timing results. The configs are in the repo if anyone wants to see my (probably not optimal) setup!