It's Kubernetes in Kubernetes and a reference in k3s which is also a project we are heavily contributing to, at SUSE.

Meanwhile I am sharing a little experimentation I did to increase release note visibility.

Food for thought on https://www.updatecli.io/blog/welcome-releasepost/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40454888

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

And then once you have the latest version, you also have the challenge to know how to apply that update.

More I dig in the dependency management topic, more I realize that we still have long way to go.

Waow, thanks a lot for you feedback, especially to take the time to write this down. I'll do my best to answer as you cover different topics which have been scratching my head since the beginning of the project. But first keep in mind that I had a strong constrain which was my spare time :).

It's definitely something which I am planning to improve.

Currently everything is done at build time and rely on Golang interface. So a resource kind need to match a golang package. A package needs to implement the correct function for it to work. for example for a "source" you need to implement the "source" function as in the following example.

``` func (m *Maven) Source(workingDir string) (string, error) { // Implement whatever you need and return the source value return "the source value", "an error if needed" } ``` Like in this package https://github.com/updatecli/updatecli/tree/main/pkg/plugins...

And the matching between a package and a resource kind is done here https://github.com/updatecli/updatecli/blob/main/pkg/core/pi...

Ideally I would like it to be done at runtime similar to Terraform.

If needed you can still use the "shell" target but then you put a strong dependency on the tool used within your script. Let say that your script call a python tool, then you need to be sure that both your local and ci environment have the same python version. I personally consider it as a fallback when I don't have the time to implement something better.

Ideally I would like to be able to use resources which are very specific to environment and therefor not suitable for everybody.

I built updatecli so I could use it to help me maintain infrastructure as code, then bit by bit, I discovered how other people were using it to solve challenges that I didn't imagine.

Scenario 1: https://github.com/jenkins-infra/kubernetes-management/blob/...

We monitor the latest Certmanager chart version available and we bump our git repository so Helmfile can pick the latest version and update our Kubernetes clusters. The purpose is to automate infrastructure as code.

Scenario 2: https://github.com/updatecli/website/blob/master/updatecli/u... We monitor the latest Updatecli version so we can update documentation on the website The purpose is to keep documentation up to date

Scenario 3: https://github.com/epinio/helm-charts/blob/main/updatecli/up... We monitor our application so we can automatically release a new version of a helm chart The purpose is to automate the release process.

I struggled to use the HCL.

The DSL used by updatecli is not fixed in stone. It's just the interface exposed. The reality nowadays, is that YAML remains the most used DSL.

It's not the case on most of my project, so I never commit directly to the main branch, instead I commit on a temporary branch then open a PR on GitHub so we just review and merge the changes.

Updatecli is a project that I started to help maintain the infrastructure of the Jenkins project. I needed something flexible enough to update YAML with whatever information needed. Because let’s say it, everybody loves YAML. YAML is everywhere.

Run it from everywhere…

Updatecli is a command-line tool written in Golang and available for Windows, Linux, MacOSx, amd64, arm64, thank you Goreleaser All of that to say that it runs from wherever CI or laptop we need.

As of today, Updatecli opened over 3000 Pull requests on Github, and it evolved to update automatically Dockerfile, Markdown, Helm Chart, and of course a lot of YAML for tools like Puppet, Kubernetes, or Jenkins.

How does it work?

Updatecli loads pipeline configurations from YAML(s) or Golang templates then enforce the state defined by the pipeline configuration. A pipeline run as followed:

1. Clone in a temporary location any git repositories used by the pipeline.

2. Fetch information for every *source* defined, and then inject them as entry parameters into condition(s) and target(s).

3. Test that all *conditions* defined succeed otherwise abort the pipeline.

4. Enforce the state for every *target* defined. A state means different things depending on the resource type, more on this later.

5. Commit and open pull requests when needed.

6. Apply next pipeline

A Updatecli pipeline relies on resources aka “extension” aka “plugins” to adapt pipeline behavior. By combining them, we can easily automate scenarios for release workflow, GitOps, dependency management, documentation update, etc.

A simple scenario could be: * Retrieve the latest Golang version * Test that a docker image with the latest Golang version exist on Dockerhub * If it exists, then bump the version in a YAML file and open a pull request on GitHub with the change

As of today, there are 9 extensions for "sources", 8 for "conditions", 6 for "targets", 2 for git repositories, and 1 for pull requests.

A very simple pipeline is available on -> https://www.updatecli.io/docs/prologue/quick-start/

For more complex pipelines, you can look for directories named “updatecli/updatecli.d” at the root of repositories on https://github.com/updatecli or the Jenkins infrastructure repository such as https://github.com/jenkins-infra/kubernetes-management/tree/...

I maintain a documentation website to document the different configuration. It’s not perfect but it’s available on www.updatecli.io

What’s next?

Well, it depends on many things. Updatecli is since the beginning, a fun side project, I wanted to practice Golang programming while automating tedious recurring tasks. I built it in a way that I could reuse it across the different projects which I maintain. It’s rather simple to add new resources so I’ll keep adding them based on my needs, I welcome any contributions that would benefit the community.

More information on https://www.updatecli.io https://github.com/updatecli/updatecli

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30286047

Points: 60

# Comments: 33