kube-react

A little thought experiment...

Web and UI developers spent many years writing templated "wrappers" around declarative object models. They generated full HTML using PHP, Handlebars, FlightJS, etc. Those smart folks experienced the limitations and pain points in using templating to achieve reusability. Some of those smart folks came up with a new model – ReactJS. In place of templating, ReactJS uses composition.

We users of Helm may be finding ourselves in a similar world, using the Go Template Language to generate YAML. Maybe we can piggy back off the learnings of our colleagues, and leverage composition of components...

Thoughts:

• NodeJS is by no means a language du jour in the DevOps world
• This is not ReactJS and isn't really trying to be. We're just trying to piggy back off of the good parts.
• Having a package manager for deploying 3rd party systems is 💯👌. Thanks Helm.

Built-in Components Generated from Kubernetes Protobufs

• See examples/kubernetes/core/v1
• See examples/kubernetes/apps/v1

End-user Usage

• See examples/backend.

Tooling: "kube-react"

Render Kubernetes manifests

kube-react render --file examples/backend/main.js --config-switch production > manifests.yaml

Apply changes

cat manifests.yaml | kubectl apply --filename -

A Tangent on "Terrakube"

Wouldn't it be nice if Kubernetes had a full-featured state manager? Terraform has great workflow, semantics, and features – even if you think the Hashicorp Configuration Language leaves something to be desired.

Import Existing Resources into state management

terrakube import ${terrakube_id} ${external_id}

Sync configuration to cluster using Terrakube

terrakube plan --from-file manifests.yaml --to-plan-file planfile.txt
terrakube apply --auto-approve --from-plan-file planfile.txt

Destroy resources selectively

terrakube taint ${terrakube_id}
terrakube destroy ${terrakube_id}