This is not an official Google product.

This is a prototype for an add-on that can be installed in any Kubernetes cluster to make it easier to write and deploy custom controllers.

Note: This code is in proof-of-concept, pre-alpha stage, and could bring down a cluster. In particular, it currently "fakes" watches by polling, resulting in extreme traffic to the API server. It should only be installed on a test cluster.

LambdaController is an API provided by Metacontroller, designed to facilitate custom controllers whose primary purpose is to manage a set of child objects based on the desired state specified in a parent object. Workload controllers like Deployment and StatefulSet are examples of existing controllers that fit this pattern.

The Metacontroller will handle all the behaviors necessary to interact with the Kubernetes API, including watches, label selectors, owner references, orphaning/adoption, optimistic concurrency, and exponential back-off. Object caches will be shared among all controllers implemented via Metacontroller, keeping the watch load on the API server low.

The only thing you need to write is the hook that takes as input the current state and outputs a desired state, both of which are in the form of versioned JSON manifests representing Kubernetes API objects. The process is conceptually similar to writing a static generator or template for pre-processing files to be sent to kubectl, except that Metacontroller turns it into a dynamic controller that constantly maintains your desired state and reacts to any changes made to the parent object.

Examples

• CatSet (JavaScript)

  This is a rewrite of StatefulSet, minus rolling updates, as a LambdaController. It shows that existing workload controllers already use a pattern that could fit within a LambdaController, namely managing child objects based on a parent spec.

• BlueGreenDeployment (JavaScript)

  This is an alternative to Deployment that implements a Blue-Green rollout strategy. It shows how LambdaController can be used to add various automation on top of built-in APIs like ReplicaSet.

• IndexedJob (Python)

  This is an alternative to Job that gives each Pod a unique index, like StatefulSet. It shows how to write a LambdaController in Python, and also demonstrates selector generation.

InitializerController is another API provided by Metacontroller, designed to facilitate custom controllers that implement initializers.

Similar to LambdaControllers, the Metacontroller will handle watching uninitialized objects and other interactions with the Kubernetes API. However, in this case the hook you implement is even simpler. You just accept a single uninitialized object and return a modified form of it.

Metacontroller will only call your initializer hook when it's at the top of the Pending list, and will automatically remove you from the Pending list upon success in a single, atomic update. The watch stream will be shared among all custom controllers served through Metacontroller, including both InitializerControllers and LambdaControllers.

Examples

• podhostname

  This is an InitializerController that fixes Pods for compatibility with newer clusters.

• Kubernetes v1.8+
  • Most things will work in v1.7, except garbage collection on custom resources and mutating Pod initializers.
  • Initializers are alpha in v1.7-v1.8 and must be enabled by a feature flag on the API server in order to use InitializerControllers.

Due to a known issue in GKE, you will need to first grant yourself cluster-admin privileges before you can install the necessary RBAC manifests.

kubectl create clusterrolebinding <user>-cluster-admin-binding --clusterrole=cluster-admin --user=<user>@<domain>

kubectl apply -f manifests/

If you want to build your own image for the Metacontroller Deployment, you'll need the following prerequisites:

go get -u k8s.io/code-generator/cmd/deepcopy-gen
dep ensure
make

• See CONTRIBUTING.md

• See LICENSE