kustomize/ROADMAP.md

Kustomize roadmap 2022

Presented at the January 26, 2022, SIG-CLI meeting

kustomize maintainers: @knverey, @natasha41575

Objective: Improve contributor community

Objective: Improve end-user experience

Objective: Improve extension experience

Objective: Improve contributor community

WHO: End user who also contributes source code.

Top priority:

• Kustomization v1 (also end-user impact) (PROJECT)
  • Remove the following fields:
    • vars
    • patchesJson6902, patchesStrategicMerge (consolidate on `patches)
    • helmChartInflationGenerator, helmCharts, helmGlobals
    • all long-deprecated fields in Kustomization v1 such as `bases` and those being accommodate by kustomize edit [see code snippet]
  • Ensure that `kustomize edit fix` handles migrations for all those, and that anything it changes is not still present in v1.
  • Add reorder field. Default should be FIFO and legacy should also be supported (could add alphabetic and custom sort support eventually). Replaces -reorder flag.
  • Reconcile openapi and crds field
  • Consider deprecating configurations field (old, pre-plugin, pre-openapi global configuration)
  • Add a field to enable the managedby label

Second priority:

• Improve contributor documentation
  • Instructions to upgrade kustomize-in-kubectl

Also very valuable to the project:

• Improve the release process to support regular biweekly releases PROJECT
• Release sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/api v1.0.0 PROJECT
  • Reduce the public surface of the API module
  • Vendor all transitive deps. Since kustomize is in kubectl, we must do as kubectl does to manage deps, exposing new transitive deps in code review.
• Project administration
  • Rename master branch to main

Objective: Improve end-user experience

WHO: End user that wants kustomize build artifacts (binaries, containers).

Top priorities:

• Bug fixes:
  • Fix bugs in basic anchor support: issue query
  • integer keys support: #3446
  • kyaml not respecting `$patch replace|retainKeys`: #2037
  • kustomize removing quotes from namespace field values: #4146
  • Kustomize doesn’t support metadata.generateName: #641
• Send kustomize CLI version number into kubectl (kubectl issue / kustomize issue)
• Kustomize performance investigations/improvements PROJECT
• Support generic resource references in name reference tracking
• KEP 4267: retain the resource origin and transformer data in annotations

Secondary priorities:

• kustomize cli v5 (PROJECT)
  • Drop the --reorder flag
  • Graduate cfg read-only commands out of alpha.
  • Drop the –enable-managedby-label
  • Drop old plugin-related fields in favor of the Catalog-style fields.
  • Drop the helm flags
• Confusion around namespace replacement.

Also very valuable to the project:

• Overinclusion of root directory error in error messages
• Add kustomize localize command
• Fix Windows support in test suite
• Improve end-user documentation PROJECT

Objective: Improve extension experience

WHO: Plugin developers: end users who extend kustomize, but don’t think about internals.

This objective is described in detail in the Kustomize Plugin Graduation KEP / PROJECT .

Top priorities:

• Fix core usability issues with KRM Function extensions:
  • Better errors for function config failures
  • Container KRM Mounts are not mounting via function parameters
  • Resolution of local file references in extensions transformer configuration
  • Do not silently ignore plugins when config has typo
  • KRM Exec Function can't locate executable when referencing a base
• Once core usability issues are fixed, deprecate legacy exec and Go plugin support
• Catalog KEP

Secondary priorities:

• Remove Starlark support
• Composition KEP. The implementation is complete in #4223, but depends on:
  • Convert resources and components to be backed by a reusable generator
  • Enable explicitly invoked transformers to use default fieldSpecs
  • Enable built-in generators to be used in the transformers field

Also very valuable to the project:

• Improve docs for kyaml libraries, especially by adding examples.
• Create a reserved field for plugin runtime information
• Develop new standard process for implementing builtin transformers