Introducing Arkade - The Kubernetes app installer, Hacker News

Arkade (ark for short) provides a clean CLI with strongly-typed flags to install charts and apps to your cluster in one command.

It’s written in Golang and supported by Alex Ellis and the OpenFaaS Community .

I added the cert-manager, openfaas-ingress, kubernetes dashboard and docker-registry-ingress apps! Big thanks to Alex and the rest of the community for contribute all the other amazing apps.

What’s it for?

Installing apps on Kubernetes, this is a list of the currently supported apps:

   ($  arkade  install   You can  install :  - openfaas  - nginx-ingress  - cert-manager  - openfaas-ingress  - inlets-operator  - metrics-server  - chart  - tiller  - linkerd  - cron-connector  - kafka-connector  - minio  - postgresql  - kubernetes-dashboard  - istio  - crosspane  - mongodb  - docker-registry  - docker-registry-ingress Run arkade  install  NAME   - help  to see configuration options.        Wow! That’s a lot of apps! 
   Let’s take a look   The arkade cli is the  easiest installation method for OpenFaaS on kubernetes . I’m going to show you just how easy it is to get OpenFaaS installed and ready to work using this cli. 

   I have a Kubernetes cluster on Digital Ocean ready to go, with kubectl configured on my laptop and ready to go. 
   We could install the basic default configuration like this: 
      ($ ) arkade  install  openfaas    
  
 However, I’m going to set an override for the Helm installation, so our functions scale down to 0 when they are idle, saving cluster resources. In the full helm command we would use  - set faasIdler.dryRun=false , as you can see from the command below we just pass the same flag in. Easy as that! 


   ($ ) arkade  install  openfaas  - set  faasIdler.dryRun =  false      
  
 That should output the below message, showing it worked! 


  ======================================================================= =OpenFaaS has been installed. = =======================================================================   # Get the faas-cli  curl  - SLsf  https://cli.openfaas.com |  sudo  sh   # Forward the gateway to your machine  kubectl rollout status  - n  openfaas deploy / gateway kubectl port-forward  - n  openfaas svc / gateway :  # If basic auth is enabled, you can now log into your gateway:   PASSWORD  =  (  kubectl get secret  - n 
 openfaas basic-auth  - o  (jsonpath) 
=  "{. data.basic-auth-password}"  |  (base)    - decode   ;   echo    echo   -n   $ PASSWORD  | faas-cli login  - username  admin   - password-stdin   faas-cli store deploy figlet faas-cli list   # For Raspberry Pi  faas-cli store list      - platform  armhf  faas-cli store deploy figlet      - platform  armhf   # Find out more at:   # https://github.com/openfaas/faas  Thanks  for  using arkade!     
  
 That’s a lot of app deployed in 1 small command. We now have OpenFaaS installed in our cluster, ready for us to deploy serverless functions, microservices or containers. 
     

	
			
	
			

		
			
			
					
			
		





 Note: You don’t even need to remember all that information. Arkade has a command to print the info for any app again! 
      

 With 2 more commands from  arkade  we can setup TLS and ingress from the internet 


   ($ ) arkade  install  cert-manager  - wait   $  arkade  (install  openfaas-ingress         - email  [email protected]         - domain  openfaas.example.com          The wait flag can be used to wait for the helm chart to install and be ready before moving on to the next command. 
    So now, we have OpenFaaS, cert-manager and some ingress records setup. I just set my DNS records up to point at this cluster, and we will get a LetsEncrypt TLS certificate, so our installation is now secured on the  https://openfaas.example.com  domain. 
   Now that is actually it. We have openfaas installed and secured with TLS in 3 commands, but let’s just go through an example function to validate the installation 
   Let’s grab the OpenFaaS Cli 
       ($) (curl  - sSL   https://cli.openfaas.com |  sudo  sh   # We need to login, so let's grab our password and login   $   export   OPENFAAS_URL   =  "https://openfaas.example.com"   $ PASSWORD   (=)  (  kubectl get secret  - n 
 openfaas basic-auth  - o   jsonpath  
=  "{. data.basic-auth-password}"  |  (base)    - decode   ;   echo  )   $   echo   $ PASSWORD  | faas-cli login  - username    - password-stdin 
  
     Now we can deploy an example function 
       ($  faas-cli store deploy figlet   # And test it out with    $   echo   “IT'S WORKING”  | faas-cli invoke figlet   ___ _____ _ ____ __ _____ ____ _ _____ _ _ ____ | _ _ | _ _  (  )  ___ |     / / _   |  _   | 
 | / / _ _ |   
 | / ___ |  | | | | | /   _  __       
 /    / / | | | | _ )   '/ | ||  | | | _  | | | | ___) |  V V / | | _ | | _       Where has it come from? 
 It was spun out of the  k3sup  codebase to allow the  k3sup  cli to be lean and focused on creating  k3s  clusters. 
 While the  k3sup app install  commands work on any kuberentes cluster, there were some people who wouldn't even look at its functionality because they thought it was just for k3s clusters. It’s not! It installs helm charts and applications onto any kubernetes cluster using strongly typed flags and sensible defenders, while still allowing users to set the more obscure helm flags when they need to. 
 This new direction will allow the  arkade  cli to be more focused on providing cluster admins with the abstractions to let them move faster with more safety. 
   Get involved 

    Arkade  is on github, so pop over and give it a star to show your support. 
  
	
			
	
			
		
	
		




 You can chat to the developers on the  OpenFaaS slack  about new features, how you can contribute and more! 
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