krox-controller

Warning

This project was vibe coded to validate an idea and is not production-ready software!

A Kubernetes controller that renders KRO ResourceGraphDefinitions (RGDs) from Flux sources and applies the resulting objects to the cluster.

Description

krox-controller bridges Flux and KRO: it watches GitRepository / OCIRepository source CRs for RGD artifacts, renders the RGD against per-instance values, and reconciles the resulting Kubernetes objects via server-side apply.

The controller exposes a single CRD, KroxDeployment (short name krox), which declares:

• a Flux sourceRef and path pointing at an RGD YAML inside the source artifact,
• values used to evaluate the RGD's spec schema and CEL expressions,
• an interval for periodic re-reconciliation (source events also re-enqueue),
• prune to garbage-collect objects no longer present in the latest render,
• force to take SSA field ownership on conflicts.

Status is reported via standard Ready / Reconciling / Stalled conditions along with lastAppliedRevision, observedGeneration, and an inventory of applied objects used for drift detection and pruning.

See docs/usage.md for a worked example and a description of each condition, and config/samples/ for a minimal CR.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• go version v1.24.6+
• docker version 17.03+.
• kubectl version v1.11.3+.
• Access to a Kubernetes v1.11.3+ cluster.

To Deploy on the cluster

Build and push your image to the location specified by IMG:

make docker-build docker-push IMG=<some-registry>/krox-controller:tag

NOTE: This image ought to be published in the personal registry you specified. And it is required to have access to pull the image from the working environment. Make sure you have the proper permission to the registry if the above commands don’t work.

Install the CRDs into the cluster:

make install

Deploy the Manager to the cluster with the image specified by IMG:

make deploy IMG=<some-registry>/krox-controller:tag

NOTE: If you encounter RBAC errors, you may need to grant yourself cluster-admin privileges or be logged in as admin.

Create instances of your solution You can apply the samples (examples) from the config/sample:

kubectl apply -k config/samples/

NOTE: Ensure that the samples has default values to test it out.

To Uninstall

Delete the instances (CRs) from the cluster:

kubectl delete -k config/samples/

Delete the APIs(CRDs) from the cluster:

make uninstall

UnDeploy the controller from the cluster:

make undeploy

Project Distribution

Following the options to release and provide this solution to the users.

By providing a bundle with all YAML files

1. Build the installer for the image built and published in the registry:

make build-installer IMG=<some-registry>/krox-controller:tag

NOTE: The makefile target mentioned above generates an 'install.yaml' file in the dist directory. This file contains all the resources built with Kustomize, which are necessary to install this project without its dependencies.

2. Using the installer

Users can just run 'kubectl apply -f ' to install the project, i.e.:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/<org>/krox-controller/<tag or branch>/dist/install.yaml

By providing a Helm Chart

1. Build the chart using the optional helm plugin

kubebuilder edit --plugins=helm/v2-alpha

2. See that a chart was generated under 'dist/chart', and users can obtain this solution from there.

NOTE: If you change the project, you need to update the Helm Chart using the same command above to sync the latest changes. Furthermore, if you create webhooks, you need to use the above command with the '--force' flag and manually ensure that any custom configuration previously added to 'dist/chart/values.yaml' or 'dist/chart/manager/manager.yaml' is manually re-applied afterwards.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Before opening a PR:

• Read AGENTS.md for the project layout, generated-file rules, and Kubebuilder conventions used here.
• Run make manifests generate after editing *_types.go or kubebuilder markers.
• Run make lint-fix test before pushing — unit tests use envtest (real API server + etcd) and must pass locally.
• Validate changes end-to-end against a Kind cluster with make test-e2e; do not run e2e against a shared dev/prod cluster.
• Keep changes focused and the commit history readable: one logical change per commit, conventional-style subject lines (fix:, feat:, …).

NOTE: Run make help for more information on all potential make targets

More information can be found via the Kubebuilder Documentation

License

Copyright 2026 krox-controller authors.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.