I tested out a really cool new Kubernetes management IDE that looks to have promise. Check it out here:
Not yet but this is fascinating. I'm going to give this a try today. I used OpenLens extensively at work but it's always good to have options, especially if one of several similar tools rises above the rest.ย
If this solves some of the quirks I encounter in OpenLens, I'll reply here.
Thank you for your write-up!ย
First impressions of v0.2.2-ALPHA:ย ย
Pros:
- Once connected to a cluster, it is FAST. Data pulls in quickly and navigation is quick and smooth.ย
- Resizable columns!
- K8 Studio lets you resize columns in Grid view. This is a massive improvement over OpenLens.
- Contrast: OpenLens / Lens "automagically" adjusts column widths based on screen resolution and they have always done this poorly.
- Navigating from an item in the grid --> YAML config --> Events is smooth and instant. YAML editor isn't bound to your terminal window area as it is bound in OpenLens.
Cons:
- It does not appear to natively support authentication to AWS so I was unable to test it on 80% of our infrastructure. Connecting to AWS requires manual configuration of the cluster every time your session token expires.ย I would have expected K8 Studio to allow ingesting pre-authenticated role-based session tokens from your .aws configuration.
- It does pick up clusters in your kubeconfig automatically but does not recognize clusters configured as extensions to your kubeconfig. (meaning it does not scope and merge all configs in your kube path automatically. kubectl and other IDEs like OpenLens and k9s silently merge all configs in your kubeconfig path.)
- K8 Studio does not let you configure the terminal it opens at all. You get your default OS configured terminal and that is it.ย
- Contrast: OpenLens allows you to specify your terminal executable w/arguments.ย
Shortly after my post, they released v0.2.3-ALPHA and I was able to use an authenticated AWS config to briefly access one of the clusters.ย
After checking out their Issues section, I see they are working on a feature to support multiple kubeconfig files and that there is still a known issue around accessing clusters not added through their form. A lot of promising work is going into this and I'm looking forward to evaluating it again soon.