Introduction to plugin development

If you are looking to start developing plugins for kubectl, read the Kubernetes documentation on this topic.

To summarize the documentation, the procedure is to:

• Create an executable binary, named kubectl-foo (for example) to have a plugin that can be invoked as kubectl foo.
• Place the executable in a directory that is listed in the user’s PATH environment variable. (You don’t have to do this for plugins distributed with Krew).
• You can’t overwrite a built-in kubectl command with a plugin.

Note: If you are writing a plugin in Go, consider using the cli-runtime project, which is designed to provide the same command-line arguments, kubeconfig parser, Kubernetes API REST client, and printing logic. Look at sample-cli-plugin for an example of a kubectl plugin.

Also, see the unofficial GitHub template repo for a Krew plugin in Go that implements some best practices covered later in this guide, and helps you automate releases using GoReleaser to create a release when a tag is pushed.

When developing your own plugins, make sure you check out:

• Plugin naming guide to choose a good name for your plugin
• Plugin development best practices guide for a brief checklist of what we’re looking for in the submitted plugins.

After you develop a plugin with a good name following the best practices, you can develop a Krew plugin manifest and submit your plugin to Krew.