kyma VS krew

Although I had the project on my radar, I never took a closer look at it. However, now it was the time to give it a spin ... or try. All I needed was a Kubernetes environment. As I am working in the SAP space the choice of Kubernetes is kind of predefined, namely Kyma in its managed version on the SAP Business Technology Platform.

News from the SAP side: the clear focus is here SAP Business Technology Platform especially Kyma

I could only find https://github.com/kyma-project/kyma as something close to being real-world. But my google fu is failing here. Any help would be appreciated :)

I am using Kyma as opinionated stack on top of Kubernetes (to be precise on a Gardener cluster) for this exercise. The setup should be similar for vanilla stacks, but the API gateway must be adjusted accordingly depending on what you use.

So you can install Kyma 1.x without own domain, but you have no access to the Kyma console UI. An issue is open for this (https://github.com/kyma-project/kyma/issues/11924) and according to the Kyma slack channel the situation will improve with the upcoming release of Kyma 2.x, but until then you must provide an own domain to get access to the Kyma console UI. From my point of view this lifts the entry barrier of trying out open-source Kyma, but currently this is the way.

Authenticating with Kyma is a (in my opinion) unnecessary challenge as it leverages the OIDC-login plugin for kubectl. You find a description of the setup here. This works fine when on a Mac but can give you some headaches on a Windows and on Linux machine especially when combined with restrictive setups in corporate environments. For Windows I can only recommend installing krew via chocolatey and then install the OIDC plugin via kubectl krew install oidc-login. At least for me that was the only way to get this working on Windows.

( 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}_${ARCH}" && curl -fsSLO "https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/krew/releases/download/v0.4.4/krew-linux_amd64.tar.gz" && tar zxvf "${KREW}.tar.gz" && ./"${KREW}" install krew )

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?