tilt-extensions VS lens

The first is the load function which loads Tilt extensions. It's a way to expand the tool's features, and several are available. Here we are using docker_build_with_restart, which will update the container running inside our Kubernetes cluster.

This is the central viewport into manual resource control and environment enhancement through the open-source extensions for Tilt.

argocd for cd Tilt

Recently, I found Tilt [0] to be a good partner of mine to run "all services locally". It can be compared to "webpack (live-reloading, a lot of configuration possibilities) for backend". You want to run a bunch of services directly? Use local_resource()/local(). You have Procfile? There is procfile() function. You have docker-compose.yml with databases? You can run it too with docker_compose(). You want have Tiltfile and include them all-together? There is load(). You need some web-ui for frontend devs and a nice log browser? It is there too. You need to do some extra steps before running a service? You want to update your local cluster with newly built image on file save? No problem, tilt will do that with k8s_yaml() function. Tilt uses Titlfiles for configuration, which are written Pythonish Starlark language and you use them to run any specific logic there.

Also, I am not very lucky in having resemble 1:1 k8s cluster locally. You could be close but as long as you don't run already in cloud you will have different configuration (additional annotations, various quirks that do not exist in kind/k3s but they are on GCP). However, making dedicated dev environments in the cloud might be very costly and incur a lot of additional tinkering.

[0]: https://tilt.dev/

If `host` means your production/staging hosts or whatever, you should get out of that habit now. Look into something like tilt.dev or telepresence.io or any number of other solutions that help solve this issue. Doing it directly on any host is just a recipe for bad habits and disaster.

The article doesn't mention k3d (https://k3d.io/) which is a variant of k3s that runs in docker (rather than a VM) - very nice for k8s dev/test on developer workstations.

It integrates very nicely with https://tilt.dev/ also (another very useful tool for k8s related dev/test).

If this is an issue during development then you can use something like tilt with docker-compose to directly copy modified source inside container and incrementally build it. https://tilt.dev/

I'd add Tilt

Tilt

Along similar lines, how about comparing Devspace to [Tilt](https://tilt.dev/)?

Lens

Generally I felt as if I was diving in the deepest of waters without the correct equipement and that was horrifying. Unfortunately to me, I had to dive even deeper before getting equiped with tools like ArgoCD, and k8slens. I had to start working with... HELM.

Indeed you can, with several "paid" features removed, like log tailing and pod shells. They deliberately hobbled the product. If you want to use Lens, my advice is pay for the supported version.

yes I know there is lens, but it does not allow me to see logs of multiple pods at same time and what is even more important it is not friendly for ephemeral clusters - in my case with help of kind I am recreating whole cluster each time from scratch

Let's wait for few seconds for the pods to become green, I am using Lens, it's awesome btw.

You probably don't need Rancher unless you need a GUI or manage multiple clusters, Lens or k9s might be a better fit for your use case.

`openlens` is now preferred over `Lens`, it has everything you need and none of the fluff that Lens wants to charge you for.