Skaffold Pipeline Stages [Updated]

Skaffold features a multi-stage workflow:

When you start Skaffold, it collects source code in your project and builds artifacts with the tool of your choice; the artifacts, once successfully built, are tagged as you see fit and pushed to the repository you specify. In the end of the workflow, Skaffold also helps you deploy the artifacts to your Kubernetes cluster, once again using the tools you prefer.

Skaffold allows you to skip stages. If, for example, you run Kubernetes locally with Minikube, Skaffold will not push artifacts to a remote repository.

Skaffold Pipeline stages	Description
Init	generate a starting point for Skaffold configuration
Build	build images with different builders
Tag	tag images based on different policies
Test	run tests with testers
Deploy	deploy with kubectl, kustomize or helm
File Sync	sync changed files directly to containers
Log Tailing	tail logs from workloads
Port Forwarding	forward ports from services and arbitrary resources to localhost
Deploy Status Checking	wait for deployed resources to stabilize
Lifecycle Hooks	run code triggered by different events during the skaffold process lifecycle
Cleanup	cleanup manifests and images