Google LLC today announced the general availability of Skaffold, an open-source tool that makes it easier for developers to work with Kuberentes.

The launch is the culmination of a 20-month beta testing and development period that saw the software go through no fewer than 40 iterations. Contributors from the open-source community submitted some 5,000 pieces of code, according to Google.

Kubernetes, the framework Skaffold aims to simplify, was also created by the search giant with the goal of easing developers’ work. Kubernetes has become a staple of enterprise container environments because the software automates many of the tasks involved in setting up and managing clusters. But making changes to a deployment is less straightforward: Engineers have to rejig configuration files and perform other time-consuming adjustments every time they wish to roll out an update.

Enter Skaffold. The tool analyzes the code on a developer’s machine, figures out what adjustments will have to be made to the Kubernetes environment and then deploys the update automatically. The result: A process that takes several minutes under normal circumstances is compressed into a few seconds.

Further time savings are provided by the value-added features that were incorporated into the tool during the beta period. “Skaffold’s dev loop also automates typical developer tasks. It automatically tails logs from your deployed workloads, and port-forwards the remote application to your machine, so you can iterate directly against your service endpoints,” project manager Russell Wolf and engineer Nick Kubala wrote in the announcement.

The productivity gains a tool like Skaffold can provide for an individual developer add up quickly across large software teams, particularly when Kubernetes is involved. The framework enables programmers to release new code at a much higher frequently than in a traditional application environment, which makes automation all the more valuable. 

Skaffold is available on GitHub. The tool works with a variety of other Kubernetes automation solutions and runs on the user’s local machines, meaning developers don’t have to install any additional components on their container clusters. 

Image: Google