Ability to takeout the processed kubernetes YAML file

[ahmetb]

I think "skaffold build" command should allow doing something like:

skaffold build \
    --build-receipt out.json \
    --kubectl-manifests manifests.yaml

So I can actually decide whether I want to apply the manifests.yaml myself. Similarly, I can use out.json to parse out the built artifacts and store their names/tags for my own purposes.

Right now, "skaffold {build,run}" outputs aren't very usable. There should be a contract for those willing to parse output –or flags like this saving the results to a file.

This would solve #922 as well if the produced --build-receipt and --kubectl-manifests could be fed back into skaffold deploy command.

[r2d4]

This is somewhat of what I envisioned #726 providing. But this is a great idea.

[dgageot]

Could it be a skaffold run --dry-run that outputs the manifests to stdout?

[r2d4]

How about “skaffold show build” to output what would be built + tags and “skaffold show deploy” to output what would be applied. “skaffold show” would return both?

[ahmetb]

Sorry for not replying earlier, these are good ideas.

Some form of reliable process to take out either the build artifacts and/or the compiled manifest would be very interesting.

[alnr]

Note you can pass the --dry-run flag to your deployer of choice, but output is interleaved with skaffold logging (see #1937 (comment))

[edwin-zvs]

+1 for this issue.

https://zarvis.ai is probably the first PaaS that support Skaffold as a first class citizen out of the box (I work for zarvis.ai). I'd like to share our use case and how this feature can help us.

When user push a new commit, Zarvis internally do

1. Clone repository
2. skaffold build -q -o > build.out and save build.out for future use
3. Deploy using skaffold deploy -a build.out
4. Clean up

And when deploying the same commit later, Zarvis do

1. Clone repository
2. Load saved build.out
3. Deploy using skaffold deploy -a build.out
4. Clean up

The problem here is, skaffold deploy -a requires not only build.out but also source repository. And cloning repository can take long time (Store entire source repository with build.out is not an option for us, because of security reason). We're trying to re-deploy as quickly as possible and this feature will help a lot.

Skaffold is a great tool and we really love it. Thank everyone in the community for the great work.

[balopat]

That sounds great @edwin-zvs - thanks for sharing your use case, I'm excited to see Skaffold in your product (FYI the link on your main page is pointing to buildpacks.io ;)).

[edwin-zvs]

Thanks @balopat for the feedbacks. I just fixed the link in our website. Internally, we even use Skaffold's custom buildCommand to build project with buildpacks. Works like a charm!
Thanks again.

[tstromberg]

I believe this was addressed by skaffold render. If incorrect, please add a comment and we'll reopen it.