Krew

Publish kubectl plugins to the Krew index

Anodizer generates Krew plugin manifest YAML files and pushes them to your krew-index fork repository. Krew is the plugin manager for kubectl, and publishing to the Krew index lets users install your plugin with kubectl krew install <name>.

Minimal config

crates:
  - name: kubectl-mytool
    publish:
      krew:
        repository:
          owner: myorg
          name: krew-index
        short_description: "A kubectl plugin for managing things"

Both repository and short_description are required. The publisher will error if either is missing.

Krew config fields

All string fields support Tera template rendering (e.g. {{ ProjectName }}, {{ Version }}).

Manifests repo setup

Krew plugins are distributed through the krew-index repository. To publish your plugin:

1. Fork the kubernetes-sigs/krew-index repository to your GitHub account or organization.
2. Set manifests_repo.owner and manifests_repo.name to point to your fork.
3. Anodizer will clone the fork, write the manifest into the plugins/ directory, commit to a versioned branch (<name>-v<version>), push, and open a pull request against the upstream krew-index.

If you use the unified repository config instead of manifests_repo, you can configure PR behavior with the pull_request sub-key:

krew:
  repository:
    owner: myorg
    name: krew-index
    pull_request:
      enabled: true
      draft: false
      base:
        owner: kubernetes-sigs
        name: krew-index
        branch: master
  short_description: "A kubectl plugin"
  description: "Full description of the plugin"

Authentication

Anodizer resolves a GitHub token from the repository.token field, or falls back to the GITHUB_TOKEN / ANODIZER_FORCE_TOKEN environment variables. The token must have push access to your krew-index fork.

How plugin manifests are generated

Anodizer discovers all build artifacts for the crate (filtered by ids, amd64_variant, and arm_variant if set), then generates a Krew plugin manifest YAML file conforming to the krew.googlecontainertools.github.com/v1alpha2 API.

Each artifact becomes a platform entry with:

• selector: matchLabels for os (linux, darwin, windows) and arch (amd64, arm64)
• uri: download URL for the archive
• sha256: checksum of the archive
• bin: binary name

When an artifact has arch "all", it is expanded into separate entries for both amd64 and arm64.

Example generated manifest

apiVersion: krew.googlecontainertools.github.com/v1alpha2
kind: Plugin
metadata:
  name: kubectl-mytool
spec:
  version: v1.0.0
  homepage: https://github.com/myorg/mytool
  shortDescription: A kubectl plugin for managing things
  description: A full description of what the plugin does.
  platforms:
  - selector:
      matchLabels:
        os: linux
        arch: amd64
    uri: https://github.com/myorg/mytool/releases/download/v1.0.0/mytool-1.0.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz
    sha256: deadbeefcafebabe...
    bin: kubectl-mytool
  - selector:
      matchLabels:
        os: darwin
        arch: arm64
    uri: https://github.com/myorg/mytool/releases/download/v1.0.0/mytool-1.0.0-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
    sha256: cafebabe12345678...
    bin: kubectl-mytool

The manifest is written to plugins/<name>.yaml in the krew-index repository.

Custom URL templates

Use url_template to override the default release download URLs:

krew:
  url_template: "https://cdn.example.com/{{ ProjectName }}/{{ Version }}/{{ ProjectName }}-{{ Os }}-{{ Arch }}.tar.gz"
  repository:
    owner: myorg
    name: krew-index
  short_description: "A kubectl plugin"
  description: "Full plugin description"

Full example

crates:
  - name: kubectl-mytool
    publish:
      krew:
        repository:
          owner: myorg
          name: krew-index
        short_description: "Manage Kubernetes resources efficiently"
        description: "A kubectl plugin that provides advanced resource management with filtering, bulk operations, and dry-run support."
        homepage: "https://github.com/myorg/mytool"
        caveats: "Run 'kubectl mytool init' after installation to configure defaults."
        commit_msg_template: "Update {{ .Name }} plugin to {{ .Version }}"
        commit_author:
          name: "Release Bot"
          email: "bot@example.com"
        ids:
          - mytool
        amd64_variant: "v1"
        skip_upload: auto

Dry-run mode

When running with --dry-run, Anodizer prints the plugin manifest it would generate and the target repository without cloning, committing, or pushing.