Red Hat Inc. today added some new developer client tools and local development capabilities to its OpenShift container application platform aimed at making software developers more productive.

The new tools include ready-to-use OpenShift developer services for Service Mesh, Serverless and Pipelines, as well as a new CodeReady Containers service that brings the power of OpenShift to the laptop.

Red Hat OpenShift is an integrated development environment for developers to build and deploy Docker-formatted containers and manage them using the open source Kubernetes container orchestration platform. The platform has proved popular since it gives developers an easy way manage and automate large numbers of containers, which are used to host the components of modern, cloud-native apps.

The new tools debuting in the OpenShift 4.2 release are all about making developers more productive, Red Hat said. They include Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh, which is based on the open-source Istio, Kiali and Jaeger projects and enhanced with Kubernetes Operators to make it easier to build, deploy and manage microservices-based applications.

Red Hat OpenShift Serverless, meanwhile, is a new service available in preview that helps to reduce costs by taking care of managing the underlying infrastructure. With it, it’s possible to build and run applications that can scale all the way down to zero when not in use, yet remain responsive to user requests, and immediately scale up upon demand.

Another new service, Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines, is also available in preview. The service makes it possible to run each step of the continuous integration/continuous delivery pipeline in its own container, meaning each step can scale independently to meet changing demands, Red Hat said.

Last, Red Hat CodeReady Containers is a new service that enables developers to install pre-built OpenShift environments on an individual laptop for local development purposes. CodeReady Containers comes with a framework that ties container development tools with a local cluster, making it easier to build cloud-native applications locally and, when ready, deploy to a full OpenShift environment.

Other updates in OpenShift 4.2 include support for disconnected, or “air gapped” installations, on computer systems that are physically isolated from unsecured networks such as the internet. Red Hat has also made it easier and faster to install OpenShift on public cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, and private cloud platforms such as OpenStack.

Red Hat said OpenShift 4.2 will be made available in the coming weeks.

Image: Red Hat