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App CR High Level Overview

Overview

kapp-controller provides a declarative way to install, manage, and upgrade applications on a Kubernetes cluster using the App CRD. Get started by installing the latest release of kapp-controller.

App

An App is a set of Kubernetes resources. These resources could span any number of namespaces or could be cluster-wide (e.g. CRDs). An App is represented in kapp-controller using a App CR.

The App CR comprises of three main sections:

  • spec.fetch – declare source for fetching configuration and OCI images
  • spec.template – declare templating tool and values
  • spec.deploy – declare deployment tool and any deploy specific configuration

Full App CR spec can be found here.

spec.fetch

App CR supports multiple source for fetching configuration and OCI images to give developers flexibility.

  • inline: specify one or more files within resource
  • imgpkgBundle: download imgpkg bundle from registry (available in v0.17.0+)
  • image: download Docker image from registry
  • http: download file at URL
  • git: clone Git repository
  • helmChart: fetch Helm chart from Helm repository

For each fetch source, App CR supports specifying Secret resources that will be used for authenticating with the source. kapp-controller does not check for type value of Secret resource.

image and imgpkgBundle authentication

Allowed secret keys:

  • username and password
  • token: Alternative to username/password authentication

Also supports dockerconfigjson secret type (v0.19.0+)

git authentication

Allowed secret keys:

  • ssh-privatekey: PEM-encoded key that will be provided to SSH
  • ssh-knownhosts: Optional, set of known hosts allowed to connect (if not specified, all hosts are allowed)
  • username and password: Alternative to private key authentication

http and helmChart authentication

Allowed secret keys:

  • username and password

spec.template

App CR supports multiple templating, overlaying, and data transformation tools to give developers flexibility.

  • helmTemplate: uses helm template command to render chart
  • ytt: uses ytt to render templates
  • kbld: uses kbld to resolve image URLs to include digests
  • kustomize: (not implemented yet) uses kustomize to render configuration
  • jsonnnet: (not implemented yet) renders jsonnet files
  • sops: uses sops to decrypt secrets. More details. Available in v0.11.0+.

spec.deploy

App CR uses Carvel’s kapp CLI to deploy.

  • kapp: uses kapp to deploy resources

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