Recently, Microsoft announced the general availability of Bridge to Kubernetes, formerly known as Local Process with Kubernetes. It is an iterative development tool offered in Visual Studio and VS Code, which allows developers to write, test as well as debug microservice code on their development workstations while consuming dependencies and inheriting the existing configuration from a Kubernetes environment.
Nick Greenfield, Program Manager, Bridge to Kubernetes stated in an official blog post, “Bridge to Kubernetes is expanding support to any Kubernetes. Whether you’re connecting to your development cluster running in the cloud, or to your local Kubernetes cluster, Bridge to Kubernetes is available for your end-to-end debugging scenarios.”
Bridge to Kubernetes provides a number of compelling features. Some of them are mentioned below-
Simplifying Microservice Development
When connected with the development workstation to the Kubernetes cluster, Bridge to Kubernetes helps in eliminating the need to manually source, configure and compile the external dependencies on the development workstation.
Develop Microservice Apps Faster
Bridge to Kubernetes extends the Kubernetes perimeter to your development workstation, allowing you to sidestep operational complexities of building and deploying your code into the cluster to test, debug and rapidly iterate.
Debugging and Testing end-to-end
This tool enables debugging and testing end-to-end in the context of the larger application. When the service you are debugging is called, the request is redirected to your development machine to your locally running version.
Work in Isolation in a Shared Development Environment
Bridge to Kubernetes supports working in isolation in a shared cluster. By selecting the work in isolation mode during configuration, Bridge to Kubernetes will setup the isolated service, as well as a specific subdomain URL to make sure that only traffic using that URL is redirected to your development workstation.
