kbenv

kbenv

Kubectl version manager inspired by tfenv.

If you are coming from the kbenv bash version, you should read the FAQ!

Features

• Install kubectl versions in a reproducible and easy way
• Enforce version in your git repositories with a .kubectl_version file
• Use automatic mode and download the version that matches the detected kubernetes cluster. Feature shamelessly copied from kuberlr.

Supported OS

Currently kbenv supports the following OSes

• Mac OS
• Linux
• Windows

Installation

There are two components in kbenv. One is the kbenv binary, the other one is a kubectl wrapper. It works as if were kubectl, but it has some logic to choose the version to execute. You should take care and ensure that you don't have any kubectl binary in your path. To check which binary you're executing, you can see it with:

$ which kubectl
/opt/brew/bin/kubectl

Homebrew

This is the recomended way, since it provides upgrades. It should work in Mac, Linux and Windows with WSL.

# Just the first time, activate the repository
brew tap little-angry-clouds/homebrew-my-brews
# To install
brew install kbenv
# To upgrade
brew upgrade kbenv

You should add your homebrew binary path to your PATH:

echo 'export PATH="$(brew --prefix)/bin/:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
# Or
echo 'export PATH="$(brew --prefix)/bin/:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc

For Windows you should do the weird stuff that it needs to set an environmental variable.

Manually

1. Add ~/.bin to your $PATH and create it if doesn't exist

echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
# Or
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc

mkdir -p ~/.bin

1. Download the binaries and put them on your path

Go to the releases page and download the version you want. For example:

wget https://github.com/little-angry-clouds/kubernetes-binaries-managers/releases/download/0.0.4/kbenv-linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar xzf kbenv-linux-amd64.tar.gz
mv kbenv-linux-amd64 ~/.bin/kbenv
mv kubectl-wrapper-linux-amd64 ~/.bin/kubectl

And that's it!

Usage

Help

$ kbenv help
Kubectl version manager

Usage:
  kbenv [command]

Available Commands:
  help        Help about any command
  install     Install binary
  list        Lists local and remote versions
  uninstall   Uninstall binary
  use         Set the default version to use

Flags:
  -h, --help     help

Use "kbenv [command] --help" for more information about a command.

List installable versions

This option uses Github API to paginate all versions. Github API has some usage limitations. It usually works, but if you happen to do a lot of requests to github or are on an office or similar, chances are that this command will fail. You can still install binaries if you know the version you want, thought.

$ kbenv list remote
1.18.2
1.18.1
1.18.0
1.17.5
...

List installed versions

$ kbenv list local
1.18.0
1.16.4
1.14.8

Install version

$ kbenv install 1.16.5
Downloading binary...
Done! Saving it at /home/user/.bin/kubectl-v1.16.5

Use version

$ kbenv use 1.16.5
Done! Using 1.16.5 version.

To use the automatic detection of the cluster and forget about it, just set it to auto:

$ kbenv use auto
Done! Using auto version.

Uninstall version

$ kbenv uninstall 1.16.5
Done! 1.16.5 version uninstalled from /home/ap/.bin/kubectl-v1.16.5.

FAQ

Why migrate from bash to go?

The project just as a way of downloading the binary versions. Progressively it began to grow a little. And then they came some PR for different stuff, but the hard ones where the ones for adding better support for MacOS. I don't own a Mac, so I couldn't test them properly.

Also, helmenv and kbenv where pretty much a copy paste, but they didn't have the same code, so any change from one place I would have to add it to the other.

So, with this to problems (and because I was bored) I decided to migrate them for Go. Go is cool because it lets you have self contained binaries, so no more worries about the OS! I even add support for Windows, because why not. And also, being Go a real programming language, I could add tests.

How to migrate from the bash version

For doing so you have to:

• Delete the kbenv repository: rm -r ~/.kbenv
• Delete the line that sources the bash script: source $HOME/.kbenv/kbenv.sh

And that's it. The way how the Go version works is very similar. The changed beehaviours are:

• You don't have to set the v before the versions. For example:

$ kbenv install v2.0.1
# Would be
$ kbenv install 2.0.1

• The listing commands have been separed:

# Before
$ kbenv list
$ kbenv list-remote
# After
$ kbenv list local
$ kbenv list remote

How to enforce a kubectl version

Just create a .kubectl_version in your directory pointing to the version you want to use. For example:

$ kbenv install 1.18.0
...
$ kbenv install 1.18.2
...
$ kbenv use 1.18.2
...
$ kubectl version --client
Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"18", GitVersion:"v1.18.2", GitCommit:"52c56ce7a8272c798dbc29846288d7cd9fbae032", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2020-04-16T11:56:40Z", GoVersion:"go1.13.9", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
$ echo 1.18.0 > .kubectl_version
$ kubectl version --client
Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"18", GitVersion:"v1.18.0", GitCommit:"9e991415386e4cf155a24b1da15becaa390438d8", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2020-03-25T14:58:59Z", GoVersion:"go1.13.8", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}

License

GPL3