kr8+ or kr8 is an opinionated Kubernetes cluster configuration management tool designed to simplify and standardize the process of managing Kubernetes clusters.
By leveraging best practices and providing a structured approach, kr8+ helps DevOps teams streamline their workflows and maintain consistency across multiple environments.
kr8+ is pre-1.0.
This means that breaking changes still happen from time to time, but it's stable enough for both scripting and interactive use in production environments.
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Table of Contents
- Cluster Configuration Management: Manage Kubernetes clusters across environments, regions, and platforms with a declarative and centralized approach.
- Opinionated Structure: Enforces best practices for consistent and reliable cluster configurations.
- Jsonnet Native Functions: Use Jsonnet to render and override component config from multiple sources such as templates, docker-compose files, Kustomize, and Helm.
- Extensibility: Easily extensible to meet the needs of diverse Kubernetes environments.
- Build Cache: Cache cluster-component configuration and skip components that don't need to be generated.
- CI/CD Friendly: Statically define all your configuration in a single source of truth, making it easy to integrate with CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation like ArgoCD.
kr8+ consists of:
- kr8+ - a Go binary for rendering manifests
- go-jsonnet
v0.20.0 - ghodss/yaml
v1.0.0 - Grafana/tanka helm
v0.27.1 - kubernetes/kompose
v1.35.0 - Masterminds/sprig v3 Template Library
v3.2.3- Template Documentation
The latest version is available for download from the Github releases page To install via Homebrew, add the ice-bergtech github tap and install:
brew tap ice-bergtech/tap
brew install kr8To install directly from the repo, clone and build using go 1.24.2:
git clone git@github.com:ice-bergtech/kr8.git && cd kr8
go mod download
go buildThis will create a binary named kr8 which can be placed in your /bin of choice.
Once installed, use kr8 help to show the available commands.
> ./kr8 help
An opinionated configuration management tool for Kubernetes Clusters powered by jsonnet
Usage:
kr8 [command]
Available Commands:
completion Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
format Format jsonnet files in a directory. Defaults to `./`
generate Generate components
get Display one or many kr8+ resources
help Help about any command
init Initialize kr8+ config repos, components and clusters
jsonnet Jsonnet utilities
render Render files
version Return the current version of kr8+
Flags:
-B, --base string kr8+ root configuration directory (default "./")
-D, --clusterdir string kr8+ cluster directory (default "clusters")
--color enable colorized output (default true)
-d, --componentdir string kr8+ component directory (default "components")
--config string a single config file with kr8+ configuration
--debug log additional information about what kr8+ is doing. Overrides --loglevel
--ext-str-file key=file set jsonnet extVars from file contents in the format key=file
-h, --help help for kr8
-J, --jpath stringArray additional jsonnet library directories. Repeatable.
-L, --loglevel string set zerolog log level (default "info")
--parallel int parallelism - defaults to runtime.GOMAXPROCS(0) (default -1)
--profiledir string directory to write pprof profile data to
Use "kr8 [command] --help" for more information about a command.An working example of a repo is found at ice-bergtech/kr8-examples:
git clone git@github.com:ice-bergtech/kr8-examples.gitAll configuration for kr8+ is written in Jsonnet. Jsonnet was chosen because it allows us to use code for configuration, while staying as close to JSON as possible.
A typical repo that uses kr8+ has the following parts:
- Cluster Configurations
- Component Configurations
- Jsonnet Libraries
A cluster is a deployment environment, organized in folders as a tree of configuration. Configuration the folders is layered on the parent folder's configuration, allowing you to override or extend configurations.
Cluster Spec: types.Kr8ClusterJsonnet
More information: Managing Clusters
A component is a deployable unit that you wish to install in one or more clusters. Components can be declared multiple times within a cluster, as long as they are named distinctly when loaded.
Component Spec: types.Kr8ComponentJsonnet
More information: Managing Components
Jsonnet libraries are reusable code that can be imported into your Jsonnet files. They allow you to write modular and maintainable configuration.
Common libraries include:
More information: Jsonnet Libraries
To generate the final configured manifests, just run kr8 generate.
kr8+ reads the cluster and components configuration files and generates the final manifests based on the parameters provided.
Manifest changes are checked into source control, allowing them to be ingested by tools like ArgoCD, Portainer, Rancher etc.
Documentation for kr8+ documentation and other, external resources.
- Command Documentation
- Concepts
- Managing Clusters
- Creating Components
- Native Functions
- Code Documentation
kr8+ is a fork of kr8 with some additional features and improvements. kr8 was used in production to great success at Apptio for managing components across multiple Kubernetes cluster tiers, regions, and environments.
kr8+ is coded in Golang.
Currently, version 1.24.2 is used.
Common tasks are described in Taskfile.yml, and can be executed with go-task.
Core Dependencies
- Golang version
1.24or later (installation) gitfor cloning submodules- go-task for task automation
- golangci-lint for linting
- Bats for binary testing
- Goreleaser for release packaging
Once go-task is installed, you can easily setup your environment by running:
# Install dev tools
task setupRunning Tasks
# View available tasks
task -l
# Output:
task: Available tasks for this project:
* 01_setup: Instal dev tools (aliases: setup, s)
* 01_setup-bats: Install bats testing tools (aliases: setup-bats)
* 02_build: Build kr8+ for your local system (aliases: build, b)
* 02_build-mkdocs: Uses mkdocs to build documentation site from docs (aliases: bmd)
* 03_build-snapshot: Build a snapshot for all platforms using goreleaser (aliases: build-snapshot, bs)
* 03_generate-bats-tests: Generate resources to test against (aliases: gt)
* 03_test-go: Test kr8+ for your local system (aliases: test, t)
* 03_test-package: Test compiled kr8+ binary against test inputs (aliases: test-package, tp)
* 04_generate-examples: Generate example clusters and components with kr8+ (aliases: ge, gen)Other Examples
# Build kr8+ for your local system
task build
# Run tests
task test
# Build snapshot
task build-snapshotThere are a few sets of tests:
- Unit Tests:
go test ./...ortask test - Integration Tests using
bats:task test-package - Generate examples repo:
./kr8 generate -B examplesortask gen
- Dependencies download fail: There is a large number of reasons why this could fail. Be sure to check:
- Networking problems: Check your connection to:
github.com,golang.organdk8s.io. - Disk space: If no space is available on the disk, this step might fail.
- Networking problems: Check your connection to:
- The command
go builddoes not start the build:- Confirm you are in the correct project directory
- Make sure your go installation works:
go --version
- Linting issues
- Linting issues are placed in docs/lint/kr8-linting
- Can temporarily comment out linter checks or add exclusions in
.golangci.yml
We welcome contributions from the community to enhance kr8+.
Fork the repo in github and open a pull request!
The project is licensed under the MIT license.
Parts of the code are derived from:
