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🔧 Skaffold

Skaffold

Easy and Repeatable Kubernetes Development.

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Overview

Skaffold handles the workflow for building, pushing, and deploying your application, allowing you to focus on writing code. It automates the inner development loop, watching your local source code for changes and automatically rebuilding images and redeploying to your local or remote Kubernetes cluster. It can use tools like Helm or Kustomize for the deployment step.

✨ Key Features

  • Automated build, push, and deploy pipeline
  • Continuous feedback during development
  • Supports multiple build tools (Docker, Jib, Buildpacks)
  • Supports multiple deployment tools (kubectl, Helm, Kustomize)
  • Profiles for different environments
  • Portable and shareable configuration

🎯 Key Differentiators

  • Pluggable architecture for build and deploy stages
  • Simple, declarative configuration (skaffold.yaml)
  • Integration with Google Cloud developer tools

Unique Value: Drastically improves developer productivity for Kubernetes by automating the tedious build-push-deploy cycle, providing a fast and iterative development experience.

🎯 Use Cases (4)

Local development for Kubernetes applications Streamlining the inner development loop Creating a consistent development environment across a team Can be used as a building block in a CI/CD pipeline

✅ Best For

  • A core component of Google Cloud's developer tools, including Cloud Code.

💡 Check With Vendor

Verify these considerations match your specific requirements:

  • Full-scale GitOps continuous delivery (Argo CD/Flux are better)
  • Managing production releases

🏆 Alternatives

Tilt DevSpace Docker Compose

Compared to Docker Compose, Skaffold is Kubernetes-native and manages the full workflow of building and deploying to a real cluster. It is more focused on the inner loop than full CD tools like Argo CD.

💻 Platforms

Desktop (CLI)

🔌 Integrations

Kubernetes Docker Helm Kustomize Cloud Code for VS Code and IntelliJ

💰 Pricing

Contact for pricing
Free Tier Available

Free tier: Fully open-source and free.

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