Making Plugins Mainstream: Developing a Plugin Manager for Kubectl

Kubectl Plugins are an extension mechanism to add custom commands to Kubernetes developers favorite tool: kubectl. As the plugin mechanism became stable recently in Kubernetes 1.12 and people started …

Kubectl Plugins are an extension mechanism to add custom commands to Kubernetes developers’ favorite tool: kubectl. As the plugin mechanism became stable recently in Kubernetes 1.12 and people started to develop plugins, we realized a challenge is upon us: How to make these plugins easy to develop, package and distribute.This talk is a Kubernetes SIG CLI subproject “krew” and how we have designed and built a “cross-platform package manager” that makes plugins accessible to vast amount of Kubernetes users easily.This talk will go through:* Kubernetes project’s emphasis on extensibility* Introduction to kubectl plugins and writing a small plugin* Designing Krew: how to write a plugin manager for kubernetes without writing a fully-fledged package manager* Life of a kubectl plugin managed by Krew* Challenges of building a curated catalog of plugins as Kubernetes OSS community