configset

Configset

Configset is a tool for managing a set of configs.

It can be used either as a plugin with nearly identical usage to kubectl apply, or as a library to power your own tools.

It features a similar release-like concept from Helm, which we call a config set. A set of configs is applied to Kubernetes as a unit, so that you can query existing config sets and delete them as a whole with a config set name. Resources that do not appear in the configs from a later apply can be automatically pruned from the cluster.

To install or upgrade a config set, run kubectl configset apply with the name of the config set and the source of configs:

kubectl configset apply myapp -f configs/ -n some-namespace

To delete it you only need the config set name:

kubectl configset delete myapp -n some-namespace

How is this superior than kubectl apply and Helm? Here is why:

• Configset fully utilizes the server-side apply feature introduced lately by Kubernetes, letting the apiserver do most of the validating and patching, which is more accurate than a purely client-side implementation.

• Because of this, unlike Helm, configset doesn't need to store the full content of the last applied configs somewhere, as they are not needed under server-side apply mode. Instead, configset only stores some metadata like related resources' GVK, namespace, name and uid - all it needs to implement resource pruning.

• Also, thanks to the server-side apply, implementing diff is much simpler, and the result is more accurate. Configset has a similar diff feature like kubectl diff to help compare the changes before persisting. Just use the --diff flag on kubectl configset apply or kubectl configset delete command.