Quickstart

Follow this tutorial if you’re using the Skaffold standalone binary. It walks through running Skaffold on a small Kubernetes app built with Docker inside minikube and deployed with kubectl.

In this quickstart, you will:

• Use skaffold init to bootstrap your Skaffold config.
• Use skaffold dev to automatically build and deploy your application when your code changes.
• Use skaffold build and skaffold test to tag, push, and test your container images.
• Use skaffold render and skaffold apply to generate and deploy Kubernetes manifests as part of a GitOps workflow.

Set up

Install Skaffold, minikube, and kubectl

This tutorial requires Skaffold, minikube, and kubectl.

1. Install Skaffold.
2. Install kubectl.
3. Install minikube.

This tutorial uses minikube because Skaffold knows how to build the app using the Docker daemon hosted inside minikube. This means we don’t need a registry to host the app’s container images.

Clone the sample app

Let’s get a sample application set up to use Skaffold.

1. Clone the Skaffold repository:

   git clone https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/skaffold
   

2. Change to the examples/buildpacks-node-tutorial directory.

   cd skaffold/examples/buildpacks-node-tutorial
   

Initialize Skaffold

Your working directory is the application directory, skaffold/examples/buildpacks-node-tutorial. This will be our root Skaffold directory.

This sample application is written in Node, but Skaffold is language-agnostic and works with any containerized application.

Bootstrap Skaffold configuration

1. Run the following command to generate a skaffold.yaml config file:

   skaffold init
   

2. When prompted to choose the builder, press enter to accept the default selection.

3. When asked which builders you would like to create Kubernetes resources for, press enter to accept the default selection.

4. When asked if you want to write this configuration to skaffold.yaml, type “y” for yes.

5. Open your new skaffold.yaml, generated at skaffold/examples/buildpacks-node-tutorial/skaffold.yaml. All of your Skaffold configuration lives in this file. We will go into more detail about how it works in later steps.

Use Skaffold for continuous development

Skaffold speeds up your development loop by automatically building and deploying the application whenever your code changes.

Start minikube

1. To see this in action, let’s start up minikube so Skaffold has a cluster to run your application.

   minikube start --profile custom
   skaffold config set --global local-cluster true
   eval $(minikube -p custom docker-env)
   

This may take several minutes.

Use skaffold dev

1. Run the following command to begin using Skaffold for continuous development:

   skaffold dev
   

   Notice how Skaffold automatically builds and deploys your application. You should see the following application output in your terminal:

   Example app listening on port 3000!
   

   To browse to the web page, open a new terminal and run:

   minikube tunnel -p custom
   

   Now open your browser at http://localhost:3000. This displays the content of public/index.html file.

   Skaffold is now watching for any file changes, and will rebuild your application automatically. Let’s see this in action.

2. Open skaffold/examples/buildpacks-node-tutorial/src/index.js and change line 10 to the following:

   app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Example app listening on port ${port}! This is version 2.`))
   

   Notice how Skaffold automatically hot reloads your code changes to your application running in minikube, intelligently syncing only the file you changed. Your application is now automatically deployed with the changes you made, as it prints the following to your terminal:

   Example app listening on port 3000! This is version 2.
   

Exit dev mode

1. Let’s stop continuous dev mode by pressing the following keys in your terminal:

   Ctrl+C
   

   Skaffold will clean up all deployed artifacts and end dev mode.

Use Skaffold for continuous integration

While Skaffold shines for continuous development, it can also be used for continuous integration (CI). Let’s use Skaffold to build and test a container image.

Build an image

Your CI pipelines can run skaffold build to build, tag, and push your container images to a registry.

1. Try this out by running the following command:

   export STATE=$(git rev-list -1 HEAD --abbrev-commit)
   skaffold build --file-output build-$STATE.json
   

   Skaffold writes the output of the build to a JSON file, which we’ll pass to our continuous delivery (CD) process in the next step.

Test an image

Skaffold can also run tests against your images before deploying them. Let’s try this out by creating a simple custom test.

1. Open yourskaffold.yaml and add the following test configuration to the bottom, without any additional indentation:

   test:
   - image: skaffold-buildpacks-node
     custom:
       - command: echo This is a custom test commmand!
   

   Now you have a simple custom test set up that will run a bash command and await a successful response.

2. Run the following command to execute this test with Skaffold:

   skaffold test --build-artifacts build-$STATE.json
   

Use Skaffold for continuous delivery

Let’s learn how Skaffold can handle continuous delivery (CD).

Deploy in a single step

1. For simple deployments, run skaffold deploy:

   skaffold deploy -a build-$STATE.json
   

   Skaffold hydrates your Kubernetes manifest with the image you built and tagged in the previous step, and deploys the application.

Render and apply in separate steps

For GitOps delivery workflows, you may want to decompose your deployments into separate render and apply phases. That way, you can commit your hydrated Kubernetes manifests to source control before they are applied.

1. Run the following command to render a hydrated manifest:

   skaffold render -a build-$STATE.json --output render.yaml --digest-source local
   

   Open skaffold/examples/buildpacks-node-tutorial/render.yaml to check out the hydrated manifest.

2. Next, run the following command to apply your hydrated manifest:

   skaffold apply render.yaml
   

You have now successfully deployed your application in two ways.

Congratulations, you successfully deployed with Skaffold!

You have learned how to use Skaffold for continuous development, integration, and delivery.

Follow these quickstart guides if you’re using Skaffold with the Cloud Code IDE extensions:

Cloud Code for VSCode

Create, locally develop, debug, and run a Kubernetes application with Cloud Code for VSCode.

Cloud Code for IntelliJ

Create, locally develop, debug, and run a Kubernetes application with Cloud Code for IntelliJ.

Skip any setup by using Google Cloud Platform’s Cloud Shell, which provides a browser-based terminal/CLI and editor. Cloud Shell comes with Skaffold, Minikube, and Docker pre-installed, and is free (requires a Google Account).