Microsoft recently announced the general availability of Bridge to Kubernetes. It is an iterative development tool offered in Visual Studio and VS Code that allows developers to write, test and debug microservice code on their development workstations while consuming dependencies from a Kubernetes environment.

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

Moreover, Docker and Kubernetes configurations are not required when using Bridge to Kubernetes. All you need to do is to simply run code natively on your development workstation using familiar development tools and practices, while connected to the Kubernetes cluster.

The tool also enables debugging and testing end-to-end in the context of the larger application.

Bridge to Kubernetes supports working in isolation in a shared cluster. By selecting the work in isolation mode during configuration, Bridge to Kubernetes will setup the isolated service, as well as a specific subdomain URL to make sure that only traffic using that URL is redirected to your development workstation.