Red Hat has unveiled updates to its portfolio of developer tools designed to help organizations build and deliver applications faster and more consistently across Kubernetes-based hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
The company states it is delivering new capabilities that use Git, an open-source version control system, to simplify development and deployment in hybrid multi-cloud environments.
The latest release of Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines introduces a technology preview of pipelines as code for Tekton, enabling customers to define and manage their continuous integration (CI) pipelines through Git repositories and take advantage of GitOps workflows for greater repeatability, visibility, and consistency with the application lifecycle.
The company said that with the new Tekton Chains, OpenShift Pipelines now offers built-in image signing capabilities that help improve reliability in the application delivery chain.
Developers can also use pipelined username spaces to isolate tools that require root privileges and run them as non-root within their application build and delivery pipelines without compromising security functionality.
Using OpenShift GitOps, customers can declaratively manage their OpenShift clusters, applications, and compliance activities, using well-known Git workflows to automate, define, and version security practices in an easily auditable environment.
The latest release includes Argo CD 2.3, with new sync and diff strategies, UI improvements, and performance improvements.
Previously available as a technology preview, ApplicationSets is now generally available and provides a fully supported and stable way to automate the management of multiple ArgoCD applications across multiple clusters. In addition, ApplicationSets is now fully integrated with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management.
Red Hat also unveiled the next generation of in-browser and local development environments, Red Hat OpenShift DevSpaces 3 (formerly Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces) and Red Hat OpenShift Local 2 (formerly Red Hat CodeReady Containers).
These represent the next generation of its in-browser and local development environments for Red Hat OpenShift, the Kubernetes enterprise platform.
OpenShift Dev Spaces uses OpenShift and containers to provide development or IT teams with a consistent, no-configuration development environment built to support security needs.
OpenShift Dev Spaces 3 builds on the work done through CodeReady Workspaces and provides:
A new DevWorkspace engine replaces CodeReady Workspaces’ Java REST service with a Kubernetes controller running behind the kube API server, providing greater scalability and high availability. A universal API powered by a Kubernetes native DevWorkspace CRD better aligns with typical resource management used in Kubernetes environments. A simpler design is achieved by decoupling the workspace engine from the developer IDE and server components of the OpenShift Dev Spaces service.
OpenShift Local offers one of the fastest ways to get started building OpenShift clusters, according to Red Hat. The tool is designed to run on a local machine and simplifies setup and testing. It allows developers to emulate the cloud development environment locally with all the tools needed to develop container-based applications.
According to Red Hat, OpenShift Local 2 builds on the work done through CodeReady Containers with new features and improvements, such as:
Presets allow developers to select the default local OpenShift bundle or Podman if they want to start with a more focused container runtime to minimize development configuration. Smarter binaries resulting from a disconnection of the OpenShift machine bundle from the command line tool download. This results in smaller bundles when using tools like Podman and gives developers more flexibility to choose alternative bundles that better suit their specific project. A new notification area provides greater consistency and capabilities across operating systems by allowing users to quickly view and manage a machine’s status, open the OpenShift console, change configuration, or access version information.
Docker Desktop now includes a new extension, available as a developer preview, that allows users to deploy a container image to OpenShift. Shipwright, the open-source, extensible framework for building container images for Kubernetes, now offers volume support, a wider range of customization options, and the ability for users to create ideas from the local directory. The Knative/Serverless Functions tooling allows VS Code or IntelliJ developers to view and deploy serverless applications from within the development environment. Odo 3.0, a CLI tool for developers writing and deploying applications on OpenShift and Kubernetes, has received a major update focusing on guided onboarding, the outer loop development experience, and devfile adoption for consistency across the portfolio. Devfile is now a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Sandbox project. The Kubernetes native API defines containerized development environments and is approved for use in odo, OpenShift Web Console, OpenShift Dev Spaces, and various IDE plugins.
Red Hat Vice President and General Manager, Developer Tools and Programs, Mithun Dhar, said, “For developers on the front lines of business transformation today, speed, agility, scale, and performance are paramount.
“As the pace of innovation accelerates, developers are not only under increasing pressure to bring new applications and services to market faster but also need to update and maintain existing applications.
“In some cases, this means deploying new code several times daily. We want to make it easy for developers to meet these challenges with tools and capabilities that help them be more efficient and productive.”
