Skaffold Pipeline Stages

Skaffold features a multi-stage workflow:

workflow

When you start Skaffold, it collects source code in your project and builds artifacts with the tool of your choice; the artifacts, once successfully built, are tagged as you see fit and pushed to the repository you specify. In the end of the workflow, Skaffold also helps you deploy the artifacts to your Kubernetes cluster, once again using the tools you prefer.

Skaffold allows you to skip stages. If, for example, you run Kubernetes locally with Minikube, Skaffold will not push artifacts to a remote repository.

Skaffold Pipeline stages Description
Init generate a starting point for Skaffold configuration
Build build images with different builders
Render render manifests with different renderers
Tag tag images based on different policies
Test run tests with testers
Deploy deploy with kubectl, kustomize or helm
Verify verify deployments with specified test containers
File Sync sync changed files directly to containers
Log Tailing tail logs from workloads
Port Forwarding forward ports from services and arbitrary resources to localhost
Deploy Status Checking wait for deployed resources to stabilize
Lifecycle Hooks run code triggered by different events during the skaffold process lifecycle
Cleanup cleanup manifests and images