k is a kubectl helper to help you dealing with different kubernetes environments.

At car2go we use kubernetes to orchestrate our services. We have different clusters for each of our environments: development, integration and production.

Sometimes it's kinda annoying to quickly switch between these environments. That is where k kicks in. It helps you to execute kubectl commands in an specified environment:

# Without k
$ kubectl --kubeconfig /Users/max/.bluemix/plugins/container-service/clusters/moo-dev/moo-dev.yml exec -it mypod-abcdef -- /bin/sh

# With k
$ k dev exec -it mypod-abcdef -- /bin/sh

# With k on steroids
$ k dev e mypod-abcdef -- /bin/sh

Looks a little bit easier right?

Installation

If you have node.js installed, just install k by running

npm install -g the-k

Done 🙂

Configuration

The configuration is simple. You need to place a .kfile.json in your home directory.

This JSON file should have two properties: environments and shorthands. There is an example file at the end from this article which makes this a little bit clearer.

Environments

Environments are the place where you configure the aliases and matching kubernetes configuration files.

Shorthands

Shorthands are used to make your live even more easier by defining shorthands for existing commands. If you don't want to write get pods all the time, you can create a gp shorthand which expands to this two commands.

Example .kfile.json

{
  "shorthands": {
    "gp": ["get", "pods"],
    "gs": ["get", "services"],
    "e": ["exec", "-it"]
  },
  "environments": {
    "dev": {
      "kubeconfig": "/Users/max/.bluemix/plugins/container-service/clusters/moo-dev/moo-dev.yml"
    },
    "int": {
      "kubeconfig": "/Users/max/.bluemix/plugins/container-service/clusters/moo-int/moo-int.yml"
    }
  }
}

k is still in development and you might not use it in production environments.