ko
is a CLI to support rapid development of Go containers
with Kubernetes and minimal configuration.
ko
can be installed via:
go get github.com/google/go-containerregistry/cmd/ko
To update your installation:
go get -u github.com/google/go-containerregistry/cmd/ko
ko
is built around a very simple extension to Go's model for expressing
dependencies using import paths.
In Go, dependencies are expressed via blocks like:
import (
"github.com/google/go-containerregistry/pkg/authn"
"github.com/google/go-containerregistry/pkg/name"
)
Similarly (as you can see above), Go binaries can be referenced via import
paths like github.com/google/go-containerregistry/cmd/ko
.
One of the goals of ko
is to make containers invisible infrastructure.
Simply replace image references in your Kubernetes yaml with the import path for
your Go binary, and ko
will handle containerizing and publishing that
container image as needed.
For example, you might use the following in a Kubernetes Deployment
resource:
apiVersion: apps/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: hello-world
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
foo: bar
replicas: 1
template:
metadata:
labels:
foo: bar
spec:
containers:
- name: hello-world
# This is the import path for the Go binary to build and run.
image: github.com/mattmoor/examples/http/cmd/helloworld
ports:
- containerPort: 8080
Similar to other tooling in the Go ecosystem, ko
expects to execute in the
context of your $GOPATH
. This is used to determine what package(s) ko
is expected to build.
Suppose GOPATH
is ~/gopath
and the current directory is
~/gopath/src/github.com/mattmoor/examples
. ko
will deduce the base import
path to be github.com/mattmoor/examples
, and any references to subpackages
of this will be built, containerized and published.
For example, any of the following would be matched:
github.com/mattmoor/examples
github.com/mattmoor/examples/cmd/foo
github.com/mattmoor/examples/bar
Employing this convention enables ko
to have effectively zero configuration
and enable very fast development iteration. For
warm-image, ko
is able to
build, containerize, and redeploy a non-trivial Kubernetes controller app in
seconds (dominated by two go build
s).
$ ko apply -f config/
2018/07/19 14:56:41 Using base gcr.io/distroless/base:latest for github.com/mattmoor/warm-image/cmd/sleeper
2018/07/19 14:56:42 Publishing us.gcr.io/my-project/sleeper-ebdb8b8b13d4bbe1d3592de055016d37:latest
2018/07/19 14:56:43 mounted blob: sha256:57752e7f9593cbfb7101af994b136a369ecc8174332866622db32a264f3fbefd
2018/07/19 14:56:43 mounted blob: sha256:59df9d5b488aea2753ab7774ae41a9a3e96903f87ac699f3505960e744f36f7d
2018/07/19 14:56:43 mounted blob: sha256:739b3deec2edb17c512f507894c55c2681f9724191d820cdc01f668330724ca7
2018/07/19 14:56:44 us.gcr.io/my-project/sleeper-ebdb8b8b13d4bbe1d3592de055016d37:latest: digest: sha256:6c7b96a294cad3ce613aac23c8aca5f9dd12a894354ab276c157fb5c1c2e3326 size: 592
2018/07/19 14:56:44 Published us.gcr.io/my-project/sleeper-ebdb8b8b13d4bbe1d3592de055016d37@sha256:6c7b96a294cad3ce613aac23c8aca5f9dd12a894354ab276c157fb5c1c2e3326
2018/07/19 14:56:45 Using base gcr.io/distroless/base:latest for github.com/mattmoor/warm-image/cmd/controller
2018/07/19 14:56:46 Publishing us.gcr.io/my-project/controller-9e91872fd7c48124dbe6ea83944b87e9:latest
2018/07/19 14:56:46 mounted blob: sha256:007782ba6738188a59bf21b4d8e974f218615ee948c6357535d07e7248b2a560
2018/07/19 14:56:46 mounted blob: sha256:57752e7f9593cbfb7101af994b136a369ecc8174332866622db32a264f3fbefd
2018/07/19 14:56:46 mounted blob: sha256:7fec050f965d7fba3de4bd19739746dce5a5125331b7845bf02185ff5d4cc374
2018/07/19 14:56:47 us.gcr.io/my-project/controller-9e91872fd7c48124dbe6ea83944b87e9:latest: digest: sha256:5a81029bb0cfd519c321aeeea2bc1b7dc6488b6c72003d3613442b4d5e4ed14d size: 593
2018/07/19 14:56:47 Published us.gcr.io/my-project/controller-9e91872fd7c48124dbe6ea83944b87e9@sha256:5a81029bb0cfd519c321aeeea2bc1b7dc6488b6c72003d3613442b4d5e4ed14d
namespace/warmimage-system configured
clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/warmimage-controller-admin configured
deployment.apps/warmimage-controller unchanged
serviceaccount/warmimage-controller unchanged
customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/warmimages.mattmoor.io configured
ko
has four commands, most of which build and publish images as part of
their execution. By default, ko
publishes images to a Docker Registry
specified via KO_DOCKER_REPO
.
However, these same commands can be directed to operate locally as well via
the --local
or -L
command (or setting KO_DOCKER_REPO=ko.local
). See
the minikube
section for more detail.
ko publish
simply builds and publishes images for each import path passed as
an argument. It prints the images' published digests after each image is published.
$ ko publish github.com/mattmoor/warm-image/cmd/sleeper
2018/07/19 14:57:34 Using base gcr.io/distroless/base:latest for github.com/mattmoor/warm-image/cmd/sleeper
2018/07/19 14:57:35 Publishing us.gcr.io/my-project/sleeper-ebdb8b8b13d4bbe1d3592de055016d37:latest
2018/07/19 14:57:35 mounted blob: sha256:739b3deec2edb17c512f507894c55c2681f9724191d820cdc01f668330724ca7
2018/07/19 14:57:35 mounted blob: sha256:57752e7f9593cbfb7101af994b136a369ecc8174332866622db32a264f3fbefd
2018/07/19 14:57:35 mounted blob: sha256:59df9d5b488aea2753ab7774ae41a9a3e96903f87ac699f3505960e744f36f7d
2018/07/19 14:57:36 us.gcr.io/my-project/sleeper-ebdb8b8b13d4bbe1d3592de055016d37:latest: digest: sha256:6c7b96a294cad3ce613aac23c8aca5f9dd12a894354ab276c157fb5c1c2e3326 size: 592
2018/07/19 14:57:36 Published us.gcr.io/my-project/sleeper-ebdb8b8b13d4bbe1d3592de055016d37@sha256:6c7b96a294cad3ce613aac23c8aca5f9dd12a894354ab276c157fb5c1c2e3326
ko publish
also supports relative import paths, when in the context of a repo on GOPATH
.
$ ko publish ./cmd/sleeper
2018/07/19 14:58:16 Using base gcr.io/distroless/base:latest for github.com/mattmoor/warm-image/cmd/sleeper
2018/07/19 14:58:16 Publishing us.gcr.io/my-project/sleeper-ebdb8b8b13d4bbe1d3592de055016d37:latest
2018/07/19 14:58:17 mounted blob: sha256:59df9d5b488aea2753ab7774ae41a9a3e96903f87ac699f3505960e744f36f7d
2018/07/19 14:58:17 mounted blob: sha256:739b3deec2edb17c512f507894c55c2681f9724191d820cdc01f668330724ca7
2018/07/19 14:58:17 mounted blob: sha256:57752e7f9593cbfb7101af994b136a369ecc8174332866622db32a264f3fbefd
2018/07/19 14:58:18 us.gcr.io/my-project/sleeper-ebdb8b8b13d4bbe1d3592de055016d37:latest: digest: sha256:6c7b96a294cad3ce613aac23c8aca5f9dd12a894354ab276c157fb5c1c2e3326 size: 592
2018/07/19 14:58:18 Published us.gcr.io/my-project/sleeper-ebdb8b8b13d4bbe1d3592de055016d37@sha256:6c7b96a294cad3ce613aac23c8aca5f9dd12a894354ab276c157fb5c1c2e3326
ko resolve
takes Kubernetes yaml files in the style of kubectl apply
and (based on the model above) determines the set of
Go import paths to build, containerize, and publish.
The output of ko resolve
is the concatenated yaml with import paths
replaced with published image digests. Following the example above,
this would be:
# Command
export PROJECT_ID=$(gcloud config get-value core/project)
export KO_DOCKER_REPO="gcr.io/${PROJECT_ID}"
ko resolve -f deployment.yaml
# Output
apiVersion: apps/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: hello-world
spec:
replicas: 1
template:
spec:
containers:
- name: hello-world
# This is the digest of the published image containing the go binary.
image: gcr.io/your-project/helloworld-badf00d@sha256:deadbeef
ports:
- containerPort: 8080
Some Docker Registries (e.g. gcr.io) support multi-level repository names. For
these registries, it is often useful for discoverability and provenance to
preserve the full import path, for this we expose --preserve-import-paths
,
or -P
for short.
# Command
export PROJECT_ID=$(gcloud config get-value core/project)
export KO_DOCKER_REPO="gcr.io/${PROJECT_ID}"
ko resolve -P -f deployment.yaml
# Output
apiVersion: apps/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: hello-world
spec:
replicas: 1
template:
spec:
containers:
- name: hello-world
# This is the digest of the published image containing the go binary
# at the embedded import path.
image: gcr.io/your-project/github.com/mattmoor/examples/http/cmd/helloworld@sha256:deadbeef
ports:
- containerPort: 8080
It is notable that this is not the default (anymore) because certain popular registries (including Docker Hub) do not support multi-level repository names.
ko apply
is intended to parallel kubectl apply
, but acts on the same
resolved output as ko resolve
emits. It is expected that ko apply
will act
as the vehicle for rapid iteration during development. As changes are made to a
particular application, you can run: ko apply -f unit.yaml
to rapidly
rebuild, repush, and redeploy their changes.
ko apply
will invoke kubectl apply
under the covers, and therefore apply
to whatever kubectl
context is active.
The --watch
flag (-W
for short) does an initial apply
as above, but as it
does, it builds up a dependency graph of your program and starts to continuously
monitor the filesystem for changes. When a file changes, it re-applies any yamls
that are affected.
For example, if I edit github.com/foo/bar/pkg/baz/blah.go
, the tool sees that
the github.com/foo/bar/pkg/baz
package has changed, and perhaps both
github.com/foo/bar/cmd/one
and github.com/foo/bar/cmd/two
consume that library
and were referenced by config/one-deploy.yaml
and config/two-deploy.yaml
.
The edit would effectively result in a re-application of:
ko apply -f config/one-deploy.yaml -f config/two-deploy.yaml
This flag is still experimental, and feedback is very welcome.
ko delete
simply passes through to kubectl delete
. It is exposed purely out
of convenience for cleaning up resources created through ko apply
.
You can use ko
with minikube
via a Docker Registry, but this involves
publishing images only to pull them back down to your machine again. To avoid
this, ko
exposes --local
or -L
options to instead publish the images to
the local machine's Docker daemon.
This would look something like:
# Use the minikube docker daemon.
eval $(minikube docker-env)
# Make sure minikube is the current kubectl context.
kubectl config use-context minikube
# Deploy to minikube w/o registry.
ko apply -L -f config/
# This is the same as above.
KO_DOCKER_REPO=ko.local ko apply -f config/
A caveat of this approach is that it will not work if your container is
configured with imagePullPolicy: Always
because despite having the image
locally, a pull is performed to ensure we have the latest version, it still
exists, and that access hasn't been revoked. A workaround for this is to
use imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
, which should work well with ko
in
all contexts.
Images will appear in the Docker daemon as ko.local/import.path.com/foo/cmd/bar
.
With --local
import paths are always preserved (see --preserve-import-paths
).
While ko
aims to have zero configuration, there are certain scenarios where
you will want to override ko
's default behavior. This is done via .ko.yaml
.
.ko.yaml
is put into the directory from which ko
will be invoked. One can
override the directory with the KO_CONFIG_PATH
environment variable.
If neither is present, then ko
will rely on its default behaviors.
By default, ko
makes use of gcr.io/distroless/base:latest
as the base image
for containers. There are a wide array of scenarios in which overriding this
makes sense, for example:
- Pinning to a particular digest of this image for repeatable builds,
- Replacing this streamlined base image with another with better debugging
tools (e.g. a shell, like
docker.io/library/ubuntu
).
The default base image ko
uses can be changed by simply adding the following
line to .ko.yaml
:
defaultBaseImage: gcr.io/another-project/another-image@sha256:deadbeef
Some of your binaries may have requirements that are a more unique, and you
may want to direct ko
to use a particular base image for just those binaries.
The base image ko
uses can be changed by adding the following to .ko.yaml
:
baseImageOverrides:
github.com/my-org/my-repo/path/to/binary: docker.io/another/base:latest
Once introduced to .ko.yaml
, you may find yourself wondering: Why does it
not hold the value of $KO_DOCKER_REPO
?
The answer is that .ko.yaml
is expected to sit in the root of a repository,
and get checked in and versioned alongside your source code. This also means
that the configured values will be shared across developers on a project, which
for KO_DOCKER_REPO
is actually undesireable because each developer is (likely)
using their own docker repository and cluster.
A question that often comes up after using ko
for a while is: "How do I
include static assets in images produced with ko
?".
For this, ko
builds around an idiom similar to go test
and testdata/
.
ko
will include all of the data under <import path>/kodata/...
in the
images it produces.
These files are placed under /var/run/ko/...
, but the appropriate mechanism
for referencing them should be through the KO_DATA_PATH
environment variable.
The intent of this is to enable users to test things outside of ko
as follows:
KO_DATA_PATH=$PWD/cmd/ko/test/kodata go run ./cmd/ko/test/*.go
2018/07/19 23:35:20 Hello there
This produces identical output to being run within the container locally:
ko publish -L ./cmd/ko/test
2018/07/19 23:36:11 Using base gcr.io/distroless/base:latest for github.com/google/go-containerregistry/cmd/ko/test
2018/07/19 23:36:12 Loading ko.local/github.com/google/go-containerregistry/cmd/ko/test:703c205bf2f405af520b40536b87aafadcf181562b8faa6690fd2992084c8577
2018/07/19 23:36:13 Loaded ko.local/github.com/google/go-containerregistry/cmd/ko/test:703c205bf2f405af520b40536b87aafadcf181562b8faa6690fd2992084c8577
docker run -ti --rm ko.local/github.com/google/go-containerregistry/cmd/ko/test:703c205bf2f405af520b40536b87aafadcf181562b8faa6690fd2992084c8577
2018/07/19 23:36:25 Hello there
... or on cluster:
ko apply -f cmd/ko/test/test.yaml
2018/07/19 23:38:24 Using base gcr.io/distroless/base:latest for github.com/google/go-containerregistry/cmd/ko/test
2018/07/19 23:38:25 Publishing us.gcr.io/my-project/test-294a7bdc57d85dc6ddeef5ba38a59fe9:latest
2018/07/19 23:38:26 mounted blob: sha256:988abcba36b5948da8baa1e3616b94c0b56da814b8f6ff3ae3ac316e375e093a
2018/07/19 23:38:26 mounted blob: sha256:57752e7f9593cbfb7101af994b136a369ecc8174332866622db32a264f3fbefd
2018/07/19 23:38:26 mounted blob: sha256:f24d43c24e22298ed99ea125af6c1b828ae07716968f78cb6d09d4291a13f2d3
2018/07/19 23:38:26 mounted blob: sha256:7a7bafbc2ae1bf844c47b33025dd459913a3fece0a94b1f3ced860675be2b79c
2018/07/19 23:38:27 us.gcr.io/my-project/test-294a7bdc57d85dc6ddeef5ba38a59fe9:latest: digest: sha256:703c205bf2f405af520b40536b87aafadcf181562b8faa6690fd2992084c8577 size: 751
2018/07/19 23:38:27 Published us.gcr.io/my-project/test-294a7bdc57d85dc6ddeef5ba38a59fe9@sha256:703c205bf2f405af520b40536b87aafadcf181562b8faa6690fd2992084c8577
pod/kodata created
kubectl logs kodata
2018/07/19 23:38:29 Hello there
ko
is also useful for helping manage releases. For example, if your project
periodically releases a set of images and configuration to launch those images
on a Kubernetes cluster, release binaries may be published and the configuration
generated via:
export PROJECT_ID=<YOUR RELEASE PROJECT>
export KO_DOCKER_REPO="gcr.io/${PROJECT_ID}"
ko resolve -f config/ > release.yaml
Note that in this context it is recommended that you also provide
-P
, if supported by your Docker registry. This improves users' ability to tie release binaries back to their source.
This will publish all of the binary components as container images to
gcr.io/my-releases/...
and create a release.yaml
file containing all of the
configuration for your application with inlined image references.
This resulting configuration may then be installed onto Kubernetes clusters via:
kubectl apply -f release.yaml
This work is based heavily on learnings from having built the Docker and Kubernetes support for Bazel. That work was presented here.