helm VS krew

I know naming things is hard, but Helm has been in use as a tool in the Kubernetes ecosystem for years now.

https://helm.sh/

Helm is a widely used package manager for Kubernetes, designed to simplify and automate the deployment, scaling, and management of applications. It provides an efficient way to define, install, and upgrade even complex Kubernetes applications.

The choice of a winner depends on the specific requirements, priorities, and constraints of the organization or system you're working with. Sigstore is well-suited for organizations prioritizing secure and transparent software updates for various artifacts, including Helm charts, alongside images. It has great community support and features, such as interoperability between registries, making it a great choice for most organizations. Moreover, most container registries support the signing format.

The first thing we need to do is decide on how we want to package and manage Kubernetes manifests for different environments. There's a tool called Helm which @StevenMurawski covered here, and another tool called Kustomize which I personally like to use. Both tools are great for packaging and managing Kubernetes manifests and also supported by FluxCD, but I prefer Kustomize because it is pretty easy to use and built into kubectl.

Helm Dashboard is an open-source project by Komodor that offers a visual and user-friendly way to manage and visualize all the Helm charts installed in your clusters. Instead of using the terminal, you can leverage the Helm Dashboard's intuitive UI to perform a variety of tasks that make working with Helm a breeze. Here are some of its key features:

Next, we will install APIClarity using Helm.

Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes. Helm is an open-source project originally created by DeisLabs and donated to the Cloud Native Foundation (CNCF). The CNCF now maintains and has graduated the project. This means that it is mature and not just a fad.

For CLI utilities written in Go, Cobra is the go-to command line wrapper, used by the likes of Kubernetes, Github CLI, Helm, and many more.

helm

Krew is a way to manage plugins for Kubernetes. For more info, check out the following link: https://krew.sigs.k8s.io/

I plan on getting it added as a krew plugin, so watch this space.

Krew is a plugin manager maintained by the Kubernetes Special Interest Group (SIG) CLI community. Krew makes it easy to use kubectl plugins and helps you discover, install, and manage them on your machine. It is similar to tools like apt, dnf, or brew. Today, over 200 kubectl plugins are available on Krew - and that number is only increasing. Some projects are actively used and some get deprecated over time, but are still accessible via Krew.

kubectl plugins can be installed in numerous ways, the easiest way would be to install the official plugin manager called krew.

( set -x; cd "$(mktemp -d)" && OS="$(uname | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')" && ARCH="$(uname -m | sed -e 's/x86_64/amd64/' -e 's/\(arm\)\(64\)\?.*/\1\2/' -e 's/aarch64$/arm64/')" && KREW="krew-${OS}_${ARCH}" && curl -fsSLO "https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/krew/releases/latest/download/${KREW}.tar.gz" && tar zxvf "${KREW}.tar.gz" && ./"${KREW}" install krew )

-- What is Krew?

Although there’s more than one way to distribute and install kubectl plugins, the simplest way is to use krew. It is a package manager for kubectl and makes the installation and management of kubectl plugins a cakewalk. To get started, you would have to first install krew on your machine. You can refer to this installation document to do so.

Did you notice how krew itself is a kubectl plugin as well? A plugin to manage all other plugins! If you’re willing to, you can check its source code here.

The easiest way to install kubectl-who-can is by Krew, which is the plugin manager for kubectl CLI tool. Assuming you have already installed krew, you can simply run: