Container Structure Test

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

It’s common practice to validate built container images before deploying them to our cluster. To do this, Skaffold has an integrated testing phase between the build and deploy phases of the pipeline. Natively, Skaffold has support for running container-structure-tests on built images, which validate the structural integrity of container images. The container-structure-test binary must be installed to run these tests.

Structure tests are defined per image in the Skaffold config. Every time an artifact is rebuilt, Skaffold runs the associated structure tests on that image. If the tests fail, Skaffold will not continue on to the deploy stage. If frequent tests are prohibitive, long-running tests should be moved to a dedicated Skaffold profile. Users can opt out of running container structure tests by using the --skip-tests flag.

Custom Test

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Custom Test allows developers to run custom commands as part of their development pipeline. The command executes in the testing phase of the Skaffold pipeline. It will run on the local machine where Skaffold is being executed and works with all supported Skaffold platforms. Users can opt out of running custom tests by using the --skip-tests flag.

Some example use cases for Custom Test are below:

Run unit tests
Run validation and security scans on images before deploying the image to a cluster for example by running GCP Container Analysis or Anchore Grype

Custom tests are defined on a per image basis in the Skaffold config. Every time an artifact is rebuilt, Skaffold runs the associated custom tests as part of the Skaffold dev loop. Multiple testers can be defined per test. The Skaffold pipeline will be blocked on the custom test to complete or fail. Skaffold will block deployment when the first test fails. For ongoing test failures in the dev loop, Skaffold will stop the loop (not continue with the deploy) but will not exit the loop. Skaffold would surface the errors to the user and will keep the dev loop running. Skaffold will continue watching user specified test dependencies and re-trigger the loop whenever it detects another change.

Test on Skaffold

Container Structure Test

Custom Test