Cybernetix (c8x)

Deploy and manage typesafe apps to kubernetes

Features:

• .env integration
  • C8X_MY_VARIABLE
• Automatic namespace handling
  • Auto create/upgrade namespaces
• Quickstart
  • c8x init
  • npm install -D @c8x/wordpress
  • import {Wordpress} from "@c8x/wordpress"
  • c8x install chart.ts
• Packaging/Versioning
  • npm version patch -m "Upgrade to 1.0.1 for reasons"
  • npm pack @c8x/wordpress
  • npm publish --access=public
• Typescript
• Single binary
• Safe sandboxing
• Proper IDE support
• Chart inspection
  • Render charts based on its input
• Reusable components
  • Props
• Hooks (todo)
  • <Wordpress beforeInstall={slackMessage} afterInstall={slackMessage} onError={handleError} />
  • beforeInstall afterInstall onInstallError beforeUpdate afterUpdate onUpdateError

Usage

c8x install <file>
c8x inspect <file>
c8x new <path>
c8x version

Goals

Reuse existing infrastructure and code features for enhanced developer experience

Non Goals

• Replace helm

Why configuration as code?

• Mill uses scala as configuration and has a indepth article about it's advantages
  • https://mill-build.org/mill/depth/why-scala.html
• Pulumi takes it even further and specifies the whole infrastructure as code
  • https://www.pulumi.com/
• Spring does this since 2008 to avoid large xml configurations
  • https://docs.spring.io/spring-javaconfig/docs/1.0.0.M4/reference/htmlsingle/spring-javaconfig-reference.html
• Yoke uses a similar concept
  • https://github.com/yokecd/yoke?tab=readme-ov-file

Why not using wasm to allow charts to be written in multiple languages?

c8x main concern is type safety. That excludes a lot of languages that are dynamic by default. I want to the k8s charts to be discoverable, that only really works through the help of a compiler and tools like the language server.

Helm differentiation

I feel like helm was built by the ops side of devops people. c8x is built by the dev side of devops people.

In general c8x is pretty similar to helm. It also took a lot of inspiration from it. But where helm is reinventing the wheel, c8x just falls back to already used mechanisms and infrastructure. (npm/typescript/configuration)

Topic	helm	c8x
Packaging	custom	npm
Templating	gotmpl	js/ts
Configuration	--set servers.foo.port=80	.env
Scripting	custom	js/ts
Code sharing	custom	js/ts

By custom I mean either a custom implementation, or a existing template language with limited or changed features.

Terminology

Component

A piece of reusable/configurable code, that is typically a kubernetes object, for example ingress, pod, service