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.ymlVisual verification
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.
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.
This pipeline example can be found in the Booklit repository.
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 gopath
root@2c15ff11:/tmp/build/0df9eea0# █Everything 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...
█The 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: resource, which are implemented by resource types.
The
For instance, a resource with type git refers 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
To discover available resource types, check out the Resource Types catalog!