Awesome Kustomize

A curated and collaborative list of awesome Kustomize resources.

Kustomize introduces a template-free way to customize Kubernetes manifests. It’s extensible and uses a purely declarative approach to configuration customization, which will help you efficiently manage your Infrastructure as a code (IaC).

Contributions are welcome, add links through pull requests or create an issue to start a discussion.

Contents

• Overview
• Plugins
  • Generators
  • Transformers
  • Validators
• Guides
  • Novice
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • Tips & Tricks
• Misc
• Related lists

Overview

Kustomize works as a standalone binary; also, it’s built into kubectl (since v1.14). It can be used with off-the-shelf applications like Helm charts. Also, it has a deep integration with different GitOps tools like ArgoCD, Flux, and many others.

Plugins

Kustomize has 3 types of plugins generator, transformer, and validator.

Note

If you are a plugin developer, it’s highly recommended to support the new plugins standard KRM function.

Generators

• Secretize - Generating Kubernetes Secret from various sources. It’s like a swiss army knife, but for Kubernetes secrets (Exec).
• SopsSecretGenerator - Generating Secrets from sops-encrypted files (Exec, Exec KRM).
• KSops - Generating Secrets from sops-encrypted files (Exec).
• PolicyGenerator - Generating Open Cluster Management policies (Exec).
• KRMFfnBuiltin - Running builtin generators transformers (Exec).
• Merger - Generating manifests seamlessly by extending Kustomize merge strategies using schemaless StrategicMerge (Containerized KRM, Exec KRM).

Transformers

• HelmValuesTransformer - Transforming values in HelmRelease CustomResource. It helps to manage a lot of HelmRelease’s value in single transformer file (Exec).
• TemplateTransformer - Providing a set of KRM Functions to run builtin transformers in place (Containerized KRM, Exec KRM).

Validators

• KubeconformValidator - Validating Kubernetes manifests using embedded Kubeconform (Containerized KRM, Exec KRM).

Guides

Kustomize guides based on their level or type like 📰 Article, 📺 Video, 🧪 Lab.

Novice

• 📰 Declarative Management of Kubernetes Objects Using Kustomize - The official Kubernetes documentation task for Kustomize.
• 📰 Configure Kubernetes with Kustomize - A guide helps to get started with Kustomize, understand its intended use cases, and find resources for using it with other Google Cloud tools.
• 📺 Organizing the YAML mess with Kustomize - A talk shows how Kustomize could help to manage Kubernetes YAML files with a growing number of services and environments.
• 📺 Kustomize: Deploy Your App with Template Free YAML - A talk introduces Kustomize, a declarative application management system, that allows deployments to be described as template free YAML.

Intermediate

• 🧪 ArgoCD GitOps Tutorial - Working with Kustomize - A hands-on lab covers using Kustomize in GitOps and it goes through the Kustomize syntax and deploying a Kustomized application.
• 📰 3 ways to customize off-the-shelf Helm charts with Kustomize - A guide covers 3 different ways to use Kustomize and Helm together.

Advanced

• 📰 Advanced Kustomize features - A guide covers more than 5 advanced Kustomize capabilities.
• 📰 Set OpenAPI patch strategy for Kubernetes Custom Resources - A guide shows how to provide schema to control the patch strategy of the CRDs.
• 📺 Customizing Kustomize with Client-Side Custom Resources - A talk covers extending Kustomize via plugins to address common yet idiosyncratic application needs.
• 📺 Own your YAML: extending Kustomize via Plugins - A talk shows how to create custom resources using Kustomize external plugins.
• 📰 Kustomize Enhancement with KRM Functions - A detailed guide covers KRM concept and how to use it in Kustomize plugins.

Tips & Tricks

• 📰 Delete a manifest from a Kustomize base - A handy way to delete named manifest using Kustomize patch.
• 📰 Apply Kustomize builtin transformers on a single resource - A way to use internal transformers on specific resources.
• 📰 Pass extra data to the Containerized KRM function - Different cases of share data with Containerized KRM function.

Misc

• Asdf-kustomize - Kustomize plugin for asdf version manager.

Related lists

• Awesome Kubernetes - A curated list of awesome Kubernetes resources.
• Awesome Kubectl plugins - A curated list of awesome Kubectl plugins.
• Awesome Helm - A curated list of awesome Helm charts and resources.