kubech (kubectl change)

Set kubectl contexts/namespaces per shell/terminal to manage multi Kubernetes cluster at the same time.

i.e. same as kubectx/kubens but per shell/terminal.

This is a fork of https://github.com/aabouzaid/kubech.

Acknowledgement

This is a fork of the original kubech repo, i update the original repo to better suit my use-case, so i can't (and don't want to) take credit for the work that had been done by the author of kubech.

All the modifications have been done in a limit time, so i'm sure improvement can still be made. Any PRs or questions are welcome! ;)

What is the difference between this fork and the original kubech repo?

• Work on both Linux and MacOS (the original repo have some shell commands that are not compliance with BSD (MacOS))
• Some bugs that can occur when kubecontext's name contains special characters like: colon (:) or slash (/)
• Better consistency of output message when change kube context/namespace

Prerequisites

• Have kubectl installed
• Have KUBECONFIG predefined in your shell rc. (eg. export KUBECONFIG=${PATH_TO_KUBECONFIG_1}:${PATH_TO_KUBECONFIG_2}...)

ToC

• Why
• Features
• Install
  • Bash
  • Zsh
• Usage
  • List available contexts
  • Switch context
  • List available namespaces
  • Switch namespace
• Notes
• To-do

Why

• If you manage multi K8s clusters, you will need a handy way to work more than one cluster at the same time.
• kubectx/kubens tools fix this problem but globally, that means all shells and terminals will have the same context/namespace.
• However, this is not helpful at all if you are actually working with multi clusters at the same time.
• Thus, kubech comes to fix this problem so you can set K8s cluster context/namespace per shell/terminal.

Features

• Each shell/terminal will have its own context (K8s cluster) or namespace!
• Easy to use! Just source it in your favorite shell.
• It works out of the box! No aliases, no extra customizations, it doesn't matter if you work with 1 or 100 K8s clusters!
• It still can be used along with other tools like kubectx/kubens.
• It doesn't change anything in ~/.kube/config file. So it works perfectly with static and dynamic kube config files.
• It supports extra kubectl config (in addition to ~/.kube/config).
• It supports autocomplete for contexts and namespaces.

Install

Clone this repo, then source kubech in your shell config file.

git clone git@github.com:salutgeek/kubech.git ~/.config/.kubech

Bash

echo 'source ~/.config/.kubech/kubech' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'source ~/.config/.kubech/completion/kubech.bash' >> ~/.bashrc

Zsh

Completion for zsh with oh-my-zsh enabled.

ZPLUGINDIR=${ZPLUGINDIR:-${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME/.config/zsh}/plugins};
echo 'source ~/.config/.kubech/kubech' >> ~/.zshrc;
ln -s ~/.config/.kubech/completion/kctx.zsh ${ZPLUGINDIR}/zsh-completions/src/_kctx.zsh;
ln -s ~/.config/.kubech/completion/kns.zsh ${ZPLUGINDIR}/zsh-completions/src/_kns.zsh;

Please make sure autoload -U compinit && compinit is added to ~/.zshrc if not please execute below command.

echo  'autoload -U compinit && compinit' >> ~/.zshrc

Usage

NOTE:
  - The command "kubech" is just a meta for other commands. So kubech does nothing by itself.
  - Also short names like "kctx/kns/kundo" are available.

VARS:
  KUBECONFIG_SRC_DIR  : Set directory with extra kubectl config files to read in kubech commands.
                        This allow to have multiple config files in addition to
                        the one at "$HOME/.kube/config".
                        Default: "$HOME/.kube/config.src.d"
  KUBECONFIG_DEST_DIR : Set directory for temporary kubectl config files. The files
                        in this directory are auto-generated by kubech commands
                        and you don't need to interact with them or even change that var.
                        Default: "$HOME/.kube/config.dest.d"

USAGE:
  kctx                : List all contexts
  kctx <CONTEXT>      : Switch to context <CONTEXT>
  kns                 : List all namespaces
  kns <NAMESPACE>     : Switch to namespace <NAMESPACE>
  kundo               : Unset the active context. This is just a safty net
                        to avoid applying config by mistake to the wrong cluster.

List available contexts

$ kctx
k8s_cluster01
k8s_cluster02

Switch context

No need to write the full name, press tab for auto complete.

$ kctx k8s_cluster01

List available namespaces

$ kns
default
kube-public
kube-system
monitoring

Switch namespace

No need to write the full name, press tab for auto complete.

$ kns monitoring

Notes

• This tools has been tested with zsh 5.8.1 only. However it should work with other shells like bash.
• It's recommended to use this tool with kube-ps1 so current cluster is more visible.
• It's still recommended to have kubectx/kubens to manage contexts/namespaces globally.

To-do

• Test it with older bash versions like bash v3 on MacOS/Linux