The Carvel toolsuite: build, configure, deploy k8s apps, following the Unix philosophy

Daniel Garnier-Moiroux

Creating and managing applications on Kubernetes poses many challenges: templating, immutable image references, package management, lifecycle management, overriding defaults, etc. There are a plethora of tools to solve these pain points, from the very monolithic Helm to the specialized Kustomize, each with strength and weaknesses. Carvel, a CNCF incubating project since Nov 2022, aims to tackle those challenges with the Unix philosophy. Carvel is a toolsuite, where each tool is single-purpose. Commands can be chained in Unix-style pipelines, and the output of most of the tools can be composed with existing solutions - for example, using Carvel's ytt to template Helm charts. In this session, with the help of a few slides and some live-coding, we'll do a tour of the Carvel portfolio, packaging a simple app for kubernetes, with configuration from the ground up, all the way to distributing it for consumption.