Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

October 2019

Run your tests in parallel with Codefresh and Knapsack Pro

One of the most well-known problems when it comes to testing applications is the amount of time required by all test suites. Integration tests, in particular, are usually very slow to execute and depending on the type of application, several minutes (or even hours in extreme cases) are needed in order to get the final execution result. You can reduce the test execution time with several techniques, but one of the most effective methods is running your tests in parallel.

Integration Testing with Service Containers Webinar

Docker Compose is great for local development, but an effective CI/CD pipeline will also need to execute integration tests after a commit is pushed. The easiest way to bring up extra services for integration testing (such as a database or a message queue) is by launching them alongside the main pipeline! In this webinar, you will see how easy is to launch multiple Docker containers in a single pipeline step, complete with health checks and service dependencies.

Helm 3: Navigating to Distant Shores

Since its initial debut 5 years ago Kubernetes has grown up quite a bit, but one thing hasn’t changed: writing Kubernetes manifest files from scratch is hard. In fact, it’s borderline discouraging for new users looking to use the defacto container orchestrator. Thus, the need for a package manager was born: Helm. Helm is almost as old as Kubernetes (it’s about 4 years) old and Helm 2 is a merger of two code bases, which made for some interesting ways of approaching even the most basic of security concerns (say, RBAC for instance). If you’re familiar with Helm you already know how useful it is, but there are features you’d like added, some updates you’ve wished for, and a major component you’d like removed: Tiller.

Crafting the perfect Java Docker build flow

What is the bare minimum you need to build, test and run your Java application in Docker container? The recipe: Create a separate Docker image for each step and optimize the way you are running it. I started working with Java in 1998, and for a long time, it was my main programming language. It was a long love–hate relationship. During my work career, I wrote a lot of code in Java. Despite that fact, I don’t think Java is usually the right choice for microservices.

Calling Codefresh pipelines from Github actions

At Codefresh we are all about collaboration and reusing existing standards instead of implementing proprietary solutions. A Codefresh pipeline is based on a series of Docker containers that act as individual steps. All Codefresh plugins are also just Docker images which means that extending a Codefresh pipeline is the same thing as writing a Dockerfile. Github has recently announced an integrated automation solution called Actions.