Building Artifacts with a Custom Build Script

This page describes building Skaffold artifacts using a custom build script, which builds images using ko. ko builds containers from Go source code, without the need for a Dockerfile or even installing Docker.

Before you begin

First, you will need to have Skaffold and a Kubernetes cluster set up. To learn more about how to set up Skaffold and a Kubernetes cluster, see the [quickstart docs]({{< relref "/docs/quickstart" >}}).

Tutorial - Hello World in Go

This tutorial will be based on the custom example in our repository.

Adding a Custom Builder to Your Skaffold Project

We'll need to configure your Skaffold config to build artifacts with ko. To do this, we will take advantage of the [custom builder]({{<relref "/docs/builders/builder-types/custom" >}}) in Skaffold.

First, add a build.sh file which Skaffold will call to build artifacts:

{{% readfile file="samples/builders/custom-buildpacks/build.sh" %}}

Then, configure artifacts in your skaffold.yaml to build with build.sh:

{{% readfile file="samples/builders/custom-buildpacks/skaffold.yaml" %}}

List the file dependencies for each artifact; in the example above, Skaffold watches all files in the build context. For more information about listing dependencies for custom artifacts, see the documentation [here]({{<relref "/docs/builders/builder-types/custom#dependencies-from-a-command" >}}).

You can check custom builder is properly configured by running skaffold build. This command should build the artifacts and exit successfully.