Today, we’re proud to announce the Local Process with Kubernetes preview feature in Visual Studio 2019 16.7 Preview 2.   

 Local Process with Kubernetes allows you to write, test and debug your .NET microservice code on your development workstation while connected to your Kubernetes cluster with the rest of your application or services.  

Develop Microservice Apps Faster   

A typical developer workflow for developing microservice applications that target Kubernetes involves modifying code, building a container image and deploying that image to a Kubernetes cluster.  All this is necessary to see the changes manifest. The complexity of this workflow many times a day impedes developers’ ability to perform the core of the inner loop tasks. However, this process can be greatly simplified.      

Local Process with Kubernetes extends the Kubernetes perimeter to your development workstation, allowing you to sidestep the operational complexities of building and syncing your code into the cluster to test, debug and rapidly iterate.    

With this workflow, there is no need for extra assets, such as a Dockerfile or Kubernetes manifests. You can simply run your code natively on your development workstation while connected to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing you to test your code changes in the context of the larger application.   

Simplifying Microservice Development    

Microservice applications are comprised of many services, often calling each other.  Each service has its own configuration and dependencies, making running the application locally time consuming and complex.   

By using Local Process with Kubernetes to connect your development workstation to your Kubernetes cluster, you eliminate the need to manually source, configure and compile external dependencies on your development workstation.     

Additionally, environment variables, connection strings and volumes from the cluster are inherited by your microservice code running locally.   

Easy Debugging   

Integrated into the Visual Studio development environment as an additional Debug Profile, Local Process with Kubernetes creates the connection to your Kubernetes cluster to allow an easy F5 debug experience.  By running your usual debug profile with the added cluster configuration, you can debug your code as you normally would while taking advantage of the speed and flexibility of local debugging.

Developing and testing end-to-end   

Local Process with Kubernetes enables testing end-to-end during development time.  Select an existing service in the cluster to route to your development machine where an instance of that service is running locally.     

Requests initiated through the frontend of the application running in Kubernetes will route between services running in the cluster until the service you specified to redirect is called.      

Let us know about your experience!   

We’d love to hear about your experience with Local Process with Kubernetes and where we can improve.  For issues or comments, please visit our GitHub issues page.