
Buildbox: A Hosted CI service that uses your own infrastructure to run builds - keithpitt
https://buildbox.io
======
peterwwillis
Is it just me, or has the entire Open Source/Free Software movement(s) been
replaced by simple proprietary tools "in beta" pushed by profiteering young
coders looking to start a micro-business oriented towards their peers? The
great majority of these tools could be [and often are] written in a weekend,
which is why it confuses me they'd be trying to sell it to someone.

As soon as I see a shiny, polished web page with lots of highlights and no
details, I now assume it's a shill for money without any meaningful content.
I'm right more often than not. Oh, startup culture!

~~~
keithpitt
Hi peter,

Thanks for taking the time to give us some feedback!

Jenknis has been around forever, and probably will be. It's one of those
pieces of software that just keeps on going. Like the movie Grease - sure it's
rough around the edges, but it's still pretty damn good - and future
generations will still watch it.

People will still write these tools in a weekend - and that's totally cool!
They don't have to use Buildbox if they don't want to.

There are varying skill levels out there. Some devs are really happy to
install Ruby on Ubuntu, but often have gripes installing Jenkins, managing
permissions, etc. And for those "young coders" \- Jenkins looks very dated.
It's very difficult to navigate, and managing plugins is usually a pain.

Buildbox is a middle-ground between managing Jenkins, and having your CI run
entirely for you in the cloud by other services.

Cheers,

Keith from Buildbox

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azov
Would be nice if the page explained how Buildbox compares with other popular
hosted CI tools, e.g. Jenkins ([http://jenkins-ci.org](http://jenkins-
ci.org))?

~~~
pbiggar
Any thoughts on how this compares to CircleCI
([https://circleci.com](https://circleci.com) \- I'm a founder btw)?

~~~
opendais
[https://circleci.com/](https://circleci.com/) <\- ftfy

~~~
pbiggar
Whoops! Thanks, fixed now.

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gregwebs
If you are an AWS user then you can start using
[https://koalitycode.com/](https://koalitycode.com/)

It spins up new AWS instances for you as needed in a few seconds to allow more
simultaneous builds. The killer feature of Koality though is it proxies your
repo so it blocks bad code from ever getting there.

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RossM
Seems your assets aren't available over SSL which is making the page render
plainly.

Looks like a good idea - GitLab CI recently added this to their CI component
(builders run separately from the marshalling tool).

~~~
keithpitt
Hi RossM, Keith from Buildbox here. Can you see
[https://assets.buildbox.io/assets/logo-2e6cfd9ad9b7c91ffe1e5...](https://assets.buildbox.io/assets/logo-2e6cfd9ad9b7c91ffe1e5..).
It's working ok for me... Weird.

~~~
Soliah
I'm getting an access denied error on the asset link, but the page seems to
load fine for me.

~~~
dylz
That link is literally ending with '...', not cut off by HN or anything.

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tfinch
If I understand the offering, this is great. The differentiator seems to be
the ability to use your current deployment tool to set up the test
environment, meaning it's a lot closer to your real production environment.

I recently spent a reasonable amount of time looking for a hosted CI solution
that would run the particular version of postgis we use, rather than the
'latest and greatest,' but it seems like a lot of the current offerings have
fairly limited flexibility in build environments (understandably I suppose.)

~~~
jchonphoenix
Hey tfinch, check out [http://koalitycode.com](http://koalitycode.com)
(founder here). One of our huge value adds is flexibility and we give you sudo
access to the machines you use.

I'd love to see if we match your use case and how we can improve. Can you
shoot me an email (in my user info) with your thoughts?

Thanks!

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danial
We're in similar space as you. My show HN didn't go that well and just rolled
off the new page, so I wanted to make sure you received enough love from HN :)

Why launch in private beta? Why not just let people sign up?

Your landing page looks good and by the looks of the screenshots, your
interface looks very clean too.

Curious. Are you a team or is it just you? How long have you been building
for?

~~~
keithpitt
Hi Danial,

We launched a private beta because we still have a heap of screens to style
and cleanup, as well as some documentation.

We want to do installations with every one of our customers 1-1 in the
beginning to make sure we iron out any kinks.

Thanks,

Keith from Buildbox

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cxr344
Sounds cool, but I'm a little confused on the purported security advantage of
your service... maybe I'm just a noob, or I'm missing something, but if this
integrates with GitHub, isn't your code already floating around in the cloud
somewhere?

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ssw1n
So how does it differ from Travis or Jenkins (or any other CI build tool
really)?

~~~
keithpitt
Hi ssw1n!

Travis has chosen a very tight integration with GitHub and you run builds on
their servers.

Jenkins is usually a hard thing for most people to setup. It's very old
software and the UI hasn't changed in years.

I'm trying to find a middle ground between the two services. I can easily
install ruby on a build slave, but trying to manage the build master is always
a pain.

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shaggyfrog
Does it do iOS builds? If so, how will it compare with the upcoming CI system
in OS X Server 10.9/Xcode 5?

~~~
keithpitt
Hi shaggyfrog,

Yup! We 100% do iOS builds. If you have some spare Apple hardware about the
place, you can hook Buildbox up to it, so you can start running your iOS and
Mac builds right away!

Cheers,

Keith from Buildbox

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rekwah
Interesting niche for the CI SaaS field as most try and completely replace
existing infrastructure.

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coherentpony
Can it do Mac and Windows builds?

~~~
keithpitt
Hi coherentpony, we absolutely do Mac builds. We haven't tried a Windows build
just yet, but there is no reason why it shouldn't just work!

