Flux CD vs Skaffold

Overview

Skaffold

Stacks86

Followers186

Votes0

Flux CD

Stacks81

Followers76

Votes1

GitHub Stars6.9K

Forks1.1K

Flux CD vs Skaffold: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Flux CD and Skaffold are two popular tools used in the world of Kubernetes for continuous delivery. While they both serve the purpose of automating the deployment and release processes, there are key differences that set them apart.

Installation and Configuration: Flux CD is installed as a Kubernetes operator, which makes it easier to manage and maintain in a Kubernetes cluster. On the other hand, Skaffold requires manual installation and configuration, as it is a standalone tool that needs to be added to the project's development workflow.
Deployment Strategy: Flux CD follows a GitOps approach, where the desired state of the cluster is defined in a Git repository, and Flux CD ensures that the cluster matches that defined state. Skaffold, on the other hand, follows a more traditional approach and provides various deployment strategies, such as redeploy, recreate, and incremental.
Resource Monitoring: Flux CD continuously monitors the Git repository for any changes in the desired state and automatically deploys those changes to the cluster. Skaffold, on the other hand, relies on the user-triggered commands or file changes to initiate the deployment process. It does not have built-in monitoring capabilities like Flux CD.
Development Workflow Integration: Skaffold is more developer-centric and integrates well with various development workflows, allowing developers to iterate quickly by automatically rebuilding and redeploying their applications on code changes. Flux CD, on the other hand, is primarily focused on GitOps workflow and may not have the same level of integration for development workflows.
Deployment Rollbacks: Flux CD provides built-in support for automated rollback of the deployments based on the rollback policy defined in the Git repository. It allows reverting to a previously known working state in case of any issues. Skaffold does not have built-in rollback functionality and relies on manual intervention or additional tools to handle rollbacks.
Extensibility and Customization: Skaffold provides more flexibility and extensibility options compared to Flux CD. With Skaffold, developers can easily customize the build and deployment process by using custom build scripts and plugins. Flux CD is more opinionated and follows a more standardized set of practices, limiting the customization options for developers.

In summary, Flux CD is a GitOps-based tool with easier installation and configuration, automatic deployment based on Git repository changes, and built-in rollback support. Skaffold, on the other hand, offers a more flexible development workflow integration, various deployment strategies, and customization options.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Detailed Comparison

Skaffold	Flux CD
Skaffold is a command line tool that facilitates continuous development for Kubernetes applications. You can iterate on your application source code locally then deploy to local or remote Kubernetes clusters. Skaffold handles the workflow for building, pushing and deploying your application. It can also be used in an automated context such as a CI/CD pipeline to leverage the same workflow and tooling when moving applications to production.	It is a tool that automatically ensures that the state of your Kubernetes cluster matches the configuration you’ve supplied in Git. It uses an operator in the cluster to trigger deployments inside Kubernetes, which means that you don’t need a separate continuous delivery tool.
No server-side component. No overhead to your cluster.;Detect changes in your source code and automatically build/push/deploy.;Image tag management. Stop worrying about updating the image tags in Kubernetes manifests to push out changes during development.;Supports existing tooling and workflows. Build and deploy APIs make each implementation composable to support many different workflows.;Support for multiple application components. Build and deploy only the pieces of your stack that have changed.;Deploy regularly when saving files or run one off deployments using the same configuration	Describe the entire desired state of your system in Git. This includes apps, configuration, dashboards, monitoring, and everything else; Use YAML to enforce conformance to the declared system. You don’t need to run kubectl because all changes go through Git. Use diffing tools to detect divergence between observed and desired state and receive notifications; Everything is controlled through pull requests, which means no learning curve for new developers. Just use your standard PR process. Your Git history provides a sequence of transactions, allowing you to recover system state from any snapshot. Fix a production issue via pull request rather than making changes to the running system
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 6.9K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 1.1K
Stacks 86	Stacks 81
Followers 186	Followers 76
Votes 0	Votes 1
Pros & Cons
No community feedback yet	Pros 1 Open Source
Integrations
Kubernetes Google Kubernetes Engine Docker	Git Kubernetes YAML

What are some alternatives to Skaffold, Flux CD?

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.

Rancher

Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

Docker Compose

With Compose, you define a multi-container application in a single file, then spin your application up in a single command which does everything that needs to be done to get it running.

Docker Swarm

Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.

Tutum

Tutum lets developers easily manage and run lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application. AWS-like control, Heroku-like ease. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at scale in Tutum.

Portainer

It is a universal container management tool. It works with Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm and Azure ACI. It allows you to manage containers without needing to know platform-specific code.

Codefresh

Automate and parallelize testing. Codefresh allows teams to spin up on-demand compositions to run unit and integration tests as part of the continuous integration process. Jenkins integration allows more complex pipelines.

CAST.AI

It is an AI-driven cloud optimization platform for Kubernetes. Instantly cut your cloud bill, prevent downtime, and 10X the power of DevOps.

k3s

Certified Kubernetes distribution designed for production workloads in unattended, resource-constrained, remote locations or inside IoT appliances. Supports something as small as a Raspberry Pi or as large as an AWS a1.4xlarge 32GiB server.

Flocker

Flocker is a data volume manager and multi-host Docker cluster management tool. With it you can control your data using the same tools you use for your stateless applications. This means that you can run your databases, queues and key-value stores in Docker and move them around as easily as the rest of your app.

Related Comparisons

Flux CD vs Skaffold: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Installation and Configuration: Flux CD is installed as a Kubernetes operator, which makes it easier to manage and maintain in a Kubernetes cluster. On the other hand, Skaffold requires manual installation and configuration, as it is a standalone tool that needs to be added to the project's development workflow.
Deployment Strategy: Flux CD follows a GitOps approach, where the desired state of the cluster is defined in a Git repository, and Flux CD ensures that the cluster matches that defined state. Skaffold, on the other hand, follows a more traditional approach and provides various deployment strategies, such as redeploy, recreate, and incremental.
Resource Monitoring: Flux CD continuously monitors the Git repository for any changes in the desired state and automatically deploys those changes to the cluster. Skaffold, on the other hand, relies on the user-triggered commands or file changes to initiate the deployment process. It does not have built-in monitoring capabilities like Flux CD.
Development Workflow Integration: Skaffold is more developer-centric and integrates well with various development workflows, allowing developers to iterate quickly by automatically rebuilding and redeploying their applications on code changes. Flux CD, on the other hand, is primarily focused on GitOps workflow and may not have the same level of integration for development workflows.
Deployment Rollbacks: Flux CD provides built-in support for automated rollback of the deployments based on the rollback policy defined in the Git repository. It allows reverting to a previously known working state in case of any issues. Skaffold does not have built-in rollback functionality and relies on manual intervention or additional tools to handle rollbacks.
Extensibility and Customization: Skaffold provides more flexibility and extensibility options compared to Flux CD. With Skaffold, developers can easily customize the build and deployment process by using custom build scripts and plugins. Flux CD is more opinionated and follows a more standardized set of practices, limiting the customization options for developers.

Flux CD vs Skaffold

Overview