roadmap-kubectl.md

kubectl roadmap

kubectl is the Kubernetes CLI.

If you'd like to contribute, please read the conventions and familiarize yourself with existing commands.

Owner: @kubernetes/kubectl

Label: component/kubectl

Motivation: kubectl brainstorm

Add new commands / subcommands / flags

• Simplify support for multiple files
  • Manifest that can specify multiple files / http(s) URLs
  • Default manifest (ala Dockerfile or Makefile)
  • Unpack archive (tgz, zip) and then invoke “-f” on that directory
  • URL shortening via default URL prefix
• Imperative set commands
• view commands
• Support run --edit and create --edit
• More kubectl create <sub-command>
• Support --dry-run for every mutation
• kubectl commands aliases
  • Allow user defined aliases for resources and commands
  • Suggest possibly matching kubectl commands
• Improve kubectl run
  • Make generated objects more discoverable: suggest the user to do kubectl get all to see what's generated (extend all to more resources)
  • Make it optional to specify name (auto generate name from image)
  • Make kubectl run --restart=Never creates Pods (instead of Jobs)
• Create commands/flags for common get + template patterns (e.g. getting service IP address)
• Implement kubectl cp to copy files between containers and local for debugging
• kubectl rollout
  • Add kubectl rollout start to show how to start a rollout
  • Add kubectl rollout status
• Scripting support
  • wait
  • watch / IFTTT
• Add kubectl top which lists resource metrics.

Alternative interfaces

• Create a terminal based console, ref docker console (video)
• Add kubectl sh, an interactive shell, or make a kubectlshell in contrib and make bash completion part of it (ref pythonshell)
• Think about how/whether to invoke generation commands such as kubectl run or kubectl create configmap in bulk, declaratively, such as part of the apply flow.
• ChatOps bot -- such as kubebot (add to tools documentation)

Improve help / error messages / output

• Make kubectl functionality more discoverable
  • Overhaul kubectl help
    • Print "Usage" at the bottom
    • Add keywords (critical words) to help
    • List valid resources for each command
    • Make short description of each command more concrete; use the same language for each command
    • Link to docs (kubernetes.io/docs)
    • Update kubectl help descriptions and examples from docs
    • Embed formatting and post-process for different media (terminal, man, github, etc.)
    • Suppress/hide global flags
    • [Categorize kubectl commands or list them in alphabetical order](kubernetes/kubernetes#21585)
    • Implement search in kubectl help
  • Suggest next/alternative commands
  • Add a verbosity flag that explains all the things that it's doing
  • Fix incomplete kubectl bash completion
• Improve error messages (note that not all of these problems are in kubectl itself)
  • when kubectl doesn’t know what cluster to talk to
  • non-existent namespace produces obscure error
  • line numbers with validation errors
  • invalid lines with validation errors
  • malformed inputs produce misleading error messages
  • non-yaml/json produces obscure error
  • error messages for non-existent groups/types
    • Suggest resource type when not provided (e.g. kubectl get my-pod-name should suggest running kubectl get pod/my-pod-name)
    • errors for other non-existent resources
  • lack of apiVersion/kind produces confusing error messages
  • update validation errors could be more informative
  • field validation errors could be more helpful
  • field errors should use json field names
  • clearer error for bad image/registry
  • no error for illegal scale
  • deletion timeout doesn't provide any details
  • service creation timeout doesn't provide any details
  • create secret with invalid data has obscure error message
  • --all-namespaces error is unclear
  • exec has unclear errors
  • logs has misleading errors
  • improve error reporting by adding URLs
  • Improve jsonpath / gotemplate error messages (it's tricky to get the path just right)
  • error message for user with no permissions is extremely cryptic
• Cleanup kubectl get/describe output
  • Clarify kubectl get/describe service output
• Define and document command conventions for users

Bug fix

• Fix apply, edit, and validate bugs

Installation / Release

• gcloud should enable kubectl bash completion when installing kubectl
• Pipe-to-sh to install kubectl
• Static build of kubectl for containers (we have it, but it's not part of the release)

Others

• Move functionality to server
• Eliminate round-trip conversion of API objects in kubectl
• Move preferences out of kubeconfig
• And then add more preferences
  • Enable/disable explanatory mode (see kploy output)
  • Permanently disable warnings once displayed
  • Default labels as columns
  • Default --record, --save-config, etc.
• Overhaul cluster-related commands
  • Delete cluster from kubectl config
• "kubectl-only Ubernetes": enabe kubectl to target any one of many clusters