DevSpace

DevSpace is a developer tool that simplifies the development and deployment processes for Kubernetes. It is designed to streamline the workflow of building, testing, and deploying applications in Kubernetes environments. By providing an efficient and straightforward interface, DevSpace allows developers to focus more on writing code and less on the complexities of Kubernetes configuration and management.

Install DevSpace

DevSpace Configuration

devspace.yaml is a file used to customize and configure the development environment.

In our Slack Bot DevSpace we have five major sections where we define DevSpace configurations for this project:

  • Variables (vars): This section declares environment variables for image names, sourcing them from the environment variables read from the .env.devspace file.

  • Pipelines: It defines two pipelines - dev and deploy. We customize the deployment by patching the images in the Kubernetes deployment YAMLs. This is mostly done for this public deployment since we do not want to hardcode image names in the YAMLs.

  • Images: This section details how different images will be built. We customize the build engine and the build strategy. We only want to build when we execute the build command explicitly. Additionally, we use BuildKit as the container build engine. BuildKit provides optimization features that allow us to concurrently build all the images much faster. Additionally, we do have a specific image for devspace dev. Having different images for dev and build allows us to customize the container for either engagement.

  • Deployments: Outlines the deployment configuration for Kubernetes. It includes Kubernetes manifest files and patches to modify the deployment, particularly concerning the images used for the Slack bot server and Redis master. Both images were built locally, generating a new tag per build. Patching allows us to use the latest tag, with the image name.

  • Development (dev) Section: Defines the development environment for the slack-bot-server. It includes settings for selecting the pod, replacing the container image with a development-optimized image, syncing files between the local system and the development container, terminal setup, SSH server injection, proxy commands, and port forwarding.

DevSpace Commands

Before you start using DevSpace you have to configure your Kubernetes context. A Kubernetes context is a set of access parameters for a Kubernetes cluster. It’s part of the Kubernetes configuration file (kubeconfig) and serves as a way to quickly switch between different clusters and namespaces within those clusters.

For a cloud cluster you will have to configure secure access to the cluster. Update the kubeconfig with cloud cluster credentials. Example for GKE

gcloud container clusters get-credentials <cluster_name> --zone northamerica-northeast1-a --project <project_name>

Once the access to the cluster has been configured, view the config.

kubectl config view

Choose the context name for your specific cluster and set the context with the new namespace.

kubectl config use-context your-context
kubectl create namespace webinar
kubectl config set-context your-context --namespace=webinar

We are adding global parameters to each command to make sure we are using the correct (a bit paranoid) Kubernetes cluster and namespace.

--kube-context=your-context --namespace=webinar

For Dev

devspace dev --your-context --namespace=webinar

For Build

devspace build --your-context

For Deployment

devspace build -b slack-bot-server --kube-context=your-context --namespace=webinar && devspace deploy --kube-context=your-context --namespace=webinar