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Version: 5.x

File Synchronization

There are two types of file synchronzation processes:

  • on-demand file sync using devspace sync and
  • file synchronization during development mode using devspace dev.

Start On-Demand File Sync

To establish an on-demand file synchronization between your local computer and the containers running inside Kubernetes, use the following command:

devspace sync   # common flags: --local-path=./ --container-path=/app --no-watch --config=./devspace.yaml

Learn more about the devspace sync command.

Configure File Sync

If you want to start file synchronization every time you run devspace dev, you can configure it within devspace.yaml.

Learn more about configuring file synchronization using devspace.yaml.


Troubleshooting

Check sync.log

DevSpace logs all sync activity in .devspace/logs/sync.log. Check this file to get more detailed error information.

Verbose Sync

DevSpace provides the flag --verbose-sync to print additional information while running devspace dev:

devspace dev --verbose-sync

For an even cleaner output (sync-only logs, without container logs), deploy your application using devspace dev once, then abort the dev mode and start a standalone sync process using the --verbose flag:

devspace sync --config=devspace.yaml --verbose

Ignore .git/

The sync can fail when files are constantly being changed while they are being synchronized. DevSpace will retry failing sync attempts but for folder such as .git/ which contain continuously changing information and files which may be locked by the IDE, we recommmend to ignore them via the excludePaths option in devspace.yaml.

File Permissions

Without file write permission, the sync will not be able to work. If you start your containers (in production) using a different user than root and this user does not have sufficient permissions to read and write certain files, you can:

* You can achieve this by:

  • Adding a USER statement in your Dockerfile: This is especially recommended when you are using multi-stage builds because you can add the USER statement for your development/build stage and add another USER statement to your production stage. Then, control the build target using the options.target option for Docker and kaniko builds and define a profile for removing the build stage for production deployments.
  • Setting runAsUser and runAsGroup to 0 within the securityContext of your Kubernetes pods.