kubectl VS helm

Compare kubectl vs helm and see what are their differences.

kubectl

Issue tracker and mirror of kubectl code (by kubernetes)
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kubectl helm
13 205
2,680 25,974
1.7% 0.9%
9.2 9.0
2 days ago 8 days ago
Go Go
Apache License 2.0 Apache License 2.0
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

kubectl

Posts with mentions or reviews of kubectl. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-05-02.
  • What are these orphaned PVC objects?
    1 project | /r/kubernetes | 6 May 2023
    Check https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl/issues/151
  • Setting kubectl context via env var
    6 projects | /r/kubernetes | 2 May 2023
    I have read this issue, and up to now it seems not possible to change the kubectl context via an env var: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl/issues/1154
  • Deciding between Rust or Go for desktop applications
    9 projects | /r/golang | 8 Apr 2023
    However, I would encourage people to take a look at what the code looks like before assuming the Go developer experience on this was positive. Bear in mind that's just the top level kubectl command and some helper functions, the subcommand definitions take up a several more files split into a few more packages. Then you're still not even done, because code that uses the parsed flags still has to redundantly check things that couldn't be enforced at the type level, something Go folks like to pretend is a good thing for some reason.
  • Recommendations on file/dir/module structure, common dependencies, and/or anti-patterns for writing CLI tool in Rust
    12 projects | /r/rust | 18 Mar 2023
    kubectl is for sure battle tested, but it involves very Kubernetes specific implementations and is going to be too complicated for the first pointer
  • Recommendations on building a simple DSL REPL?
    5 projects | /r/golang | 18 Mar 2023
  • Why Go and Not Rust?
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 27 Jan 2023
    > context.Background() is typically only used when one doesn’t care about the result. If you did care about the result, you should be passing the parent context to preserve the circuit breaker timeout in case the operation takes too long.

    Not necessarily. You would use context.Background in a test situation. It's also commonly used for short-lived applications like a CLI invocation. You can see kubectl uses context.Background quite a lot: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl/search?q=context.backg...

    > I think the level of pain you experience from mutable references in Rust depends on if you’re coming from an OOP or FP background. I have a FP background and so the patterns I use to build code already greatly restrict mutation. You can usually change code that updates data immutably (creating a new copy of it) with mutable code in rust because the control flow of your program already involves passing that new version back to the caller which also satisfies the borrow checker in most situations.

    There has to be a better solution to needlessly copying data.

  • kubectl - Create PV/PVC
    1 project | /r/kubernetes | 6 Nov 2022
    This is particularly useful for academic purposes, and makes somehow convinient to get the yaml template of k8s objects. I was looking for this as well due to an upcoming ckad test i have. Unfourtunately due to not being considered best practice the request for it was dismissed. https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl/issues/1073
  • Must `kubectl apply` twice to allow CRD usage?
    1 project | /r/kubernetes | 6 May 2022
    I see, apologies, I did misunderstand. This is actually a known race condition between kubectl (or even helm, or any Kube API client) issuing the requests to deploy CRs that depend on CRDs while those CRDs are still being installed on the API server. Simply put, kubectl makes these requests too quickly. There is no solution to this currently aside from deploying CRDs separately from the resources they expose. See this kubectl issue: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl/issues/1117, and there are some links in the comments to other issues echoing the same problem in helm and elsewhere.
  • What's the number one annoyance that drives you crazy about Kubernetes?
    7 projects | /r/kubernetes | 25 Jan 2022
    Go add --no-really-all if you really want it: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl
  • How to change a POD label via client-go?
    1 project | /r/kubernetes | 30 Sep 2021
    You could take a look at how kubectl actually does it: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl/blob/master/pkg/cmd/label/label.go

helm

Posts with mentions or reviews of helm. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-08.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing kubectl and helm you can also consider the following projects:

kubernetes - Production-Grade Container Scheduling and Management

crossplane - The Cloud Native Control Plane

client-go - Go client for Kubernetes.

kubespray - Deploy a Production Ready Kubernetes Cluster

robusta - Kubernetes observability and automation, with an awesome Prometheus integration

Packer - Packer is a tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration.

cli - GitHub’s official command line tool

krew - 📦 Find and install kubectl plugins

Mattermost - Mattermost is an open source platform for secure collaboration across the entire software development lifecycle..

skaffold - Easy and Repeatable Kubernetes Development

cobra - A Commander for modern Go CLI interactions

dapr-demo - Distributed application runtime demo with ASP.NET Core, Apache Kafka and Redis on Kubernetes cluster.