Installing

Krew itself is a kubectl plugin that is installed and updated via Krew (yes, Krew self-hosts).

⚠️ Warning: krew is only compatible with kubectl v1.12 or later.

macOS/Linux

Bash or ZSH shells

  1. Make sure that git is installed.

  2. Run this command to download and install krew:

    (
  set -x; cd "$(mktemp -d)" &&
  OS="$(uname | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')" &&
  ARCH="$(uname -m | sed -e 's/x86_64/amd64/' -e 's/\(arm\)\(64\)\?.*/\1\2/' -e 's/aarch64$/arm64/')" &&
  KREW="krew-${OS}_${ARCH}" &&
  curl -fsSLO "https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/krew/releases/latest/download/${KREW}.tar.gz" &&
  tar zxvf "${KREW}.tar.gz" &&
  ./"${KREW}" install krew
)

  3. Add the $HOME/.krew/bin directory to your PATH environment variable. To do this, update your .bashrc or .zshrc file and append the following line:

    export PATH="${KREW_ROOT:-$HOME/.krew}/bin:$PATH"

    and restart your shell.

  4. Run kubectl krew to check the installation.

Fish shell

  1. Make sure that git is installed.

  2. Run this command in your terminal to download and install krew:

    begin
  set -x; set temp_dir (mktemp -d); cd "$temp_dir" &&
  set OS (uname | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]') &&
  set ARCH (uname -m | sed -e 's/x86_64/amd64/' -e 's/\(arm\)\(64\)\?.*/\1\2/' -e 's/aarch64$/arm64/') &&
  set KREW krew-$OS"_"$ARCH &&
  curl -fsSLO "https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/krew/releases/latest/download/$KREW.tar.gz" &&
  tar zxvf $KREW.tar.gz &&
  ./$KREW install krew &&
  set -e KREW temp_dir &&
  cd -
end

  3. Add the $HOME/.krew/bin directory to your PATH environment variable. To do this, update your config.fish file and append the following line:

    set -gx PATH $PATH $HOME/.krew/bin

    and restart your shell.

  4. Run kubectl krew to check the installation.

Windows

  1. Make sure git is installed.

  2. Download krew.exe from the Releases page to a directory.

  3. Launch a command prompt (cmd.exe) with administrator privileges (since the installation requires use of symbolic links) and navigate to that directory.

  4. Run the following command to install krew:

    .\krew install krew

  5. Add the %USERPROFILE%\.krew\bin directory to your PATH environment variable (how?)

  6. Launch a new command-line window.

  7. Run kubectl krew to check the installation.

Other package managers

You can alternatively install Krew via some OS-package managers like Homebrew (macOS).

However, that method is not actively supported at this time.

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