arkade - get Kubernetes apps, the easy way

Gone are the days of contending with dozens of README files just to get the right version of helm and to install a chart with sane defaults. arkade (ark for short) provides a clean CLI with strongly-typed flags to install charts and apps to your cluster in one command.

What about helm and k3sup?

In the same way that brew uses git and Makefiles to compile applications for your Mac, arkade uses upstream helm charts and kubectl to install applications to your Kubernetes cluster.

On k3sup vs. arkade: The codebase in this project is derived from k3sup. k3sup (ketchup) was developed to automate building of k3s clusters over SSH, then gained the powerful feature to install apps in a single command. The presence of the word "k3s" in the name of the application confused many people, this is why arkade has come to exist.

And yes, of course it works with k3s and where possible, apps are available for ARM.

Get arkade

curl -sLS https://dl.get-arkade.dev | sh
sudo install arkade /usr/local/bin/

arkade --help

An alias of ark is created at installation time.

Usage

Here's a few examples of apps you can install, for a complete list run: [ark]ade install --help.

Install an app

[ark]ade install openfaas --gateways 2 --load-balancer false

[ark]ade install cert-manager

[ark]ade install nginx-ingress

[ark]ade install metrics-server

[ark]ade install inlets-operator --access-token $HOME/digitalocean --region lon1

After installation, an info message will be printed with help for usage, you can get back to this at any time via:

arkade app info <NAME>

Get a self-hosted TLS registry with authentication

Here's how you can get a self-hosted Docker registry with TLS and authentication in just 5 commands on an empty cluster:

arkade install nginx-ingress
arkade install cert-manager
arkade install docker-registry
arkade install docker-registry-ingress \
  --email [email protected] \
  --domain reg.example.com

Get OpenFaaS with TLS

The same for OpenFaaS would look like this:

arkade install nginx-ingress
arkade install cert-manager
arkade install openfaas
arkade install openfaas-ingress \
  --email [email protected] \
  --domain reg.example.com

Get a public IP for a private cluster and your IngressController

And if you're running on a private cloud, on-premises or on your laptop, you can simply add the inlets-operator using inlets-pro to get a secure TCP tunnel and a public IP address.

[ark]ade install inlets-operator \
  --access-token $HOME/digitalocean-token \
  --region lon1 \
  --license $(cat $HOME/license.txt)

Explore the apps

arkade install --help
ark --help

cert-manager            Install cert-manager
chart                   Install the specified helm chart
cron-connector          Install cron-connector for OpenFaaS
crossplane              Install Crossplane
docker-registry         Install a Docker registry
docker-registry-ingress Install registry ingress with TLS
info                    Find info about a Kubernetes app
inlets-operator         Install inlets-operator
istio                   Install istio
kafka-connector         Install kafka-connector for OpenFaaS
kubernetes-dashboard    Install kubernetes-dashboard
linkerd                 Install linkerd
metrics-server          Install metrics-server
minio                   Install minio
mongodb                 Install mongodb
nginx-ingress           Install nginx-ingress
openfaas                Install openfaas
openfaas-ingress        Install openfaas ingress with TLS
postgresql              Install postgresql

Tools and cached versions of helm

When required, tools, CLIs, and the helm binaries are downloaded and extracted to $HOME/.arkade.

If installing a tool which uses helm3, arkade will check for a cached version and use that, otherwise it will download it on demand.

Contributing

Suggesting a new app

To suggest a new app, please check past issues and raise an issue for it.

Improving the code or fixing an issue

Before contributing code, please see the CONTRIBUTING guide. Note that arkade uses the same guide as inlets.dev.

Both Issues and PRs have their own templates. Please fill out the whole template.

All commits must be signed-off as part of the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO)

License

MIT