Google LLC is adding a new “Kubernetes provider” to the open-source Spinnaker platform that’s used to deploy application code to multiple cloud platforms.

Spinnaker, which was jointly developed by Google and Netflix Inc., is a platform that enables the continuous delivery of software updates to apps and services hosted on public cloud platforms.

Continuous delivery is a method of software development that allows for application updates to be rolled out faster and with fewer bugs. The idea is that production and test environments for software are kept as similar as possible, with the testing and deployment performed by automated systems. This allows for software to be built, tested and finally released to end users in a much faster timeframe than is possible with older development methods.

The update is designed to make it easier to use Kubernetes, the container orchestration tool, with Spinnaker. Google product manager Andrew Phillips said in a blog post that traditional approaches to automating application deployments with Kubernetes are fraught with complexity.

“Scripting using general-purpose orchestrators is brittle and error-prone, and [requires] individual developers to have in-depth knowledge of Kubernetes manifests—a bottleneck you probably want to avoid when running at scale,” Phillips said.

The Kubernetes provider works by automating the management of these manifests, which are used enable access to all of the features of Kubernetes. The provider is also integrated with the Helmpackage manager to template manifests and with Istio for network traffic management.

“It’s still early days for continuous delivery in Kubernetes environments, and release engineering teams look to Spinnaker to provide a software delivery framework with best practices right out of the box,” Phillips said. “At the same time, organizations that are new to Kubernetes need to be able to experiment with all its features and resource types, to design an environment that works best for them.”

The Kubernetes provider is being integrated with the Spinnaker 1.10 release, which is available now.

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