Developing Kubeflex

Prereqs

go version >= go1.24.5
git
make
gcc
docker
kind

Make sure that ${HOME}/go/bin is in your $PATH.

How to build kubeflex from source

Clone the repo, set up upstream remote, fetch tags, build the binaries and add them to your path:

# Clone your fork – command only shown for HTTPS; adjust the URL if you prefer SSH
git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/kubeflex.git
cd kubeflex
 
# Add the upstream repository as a remote (adjust the URL if you prefer SSH)
git remote add upstream https://github.com/kubestellar/kubeflex.git
 
# Fetch all tags from upstream
git fetch upstream --tags
 
# Build the binaries
make build-all
 
# Add binaries to your path
export PATH=$(pwd)/bin:$PATH

Note: Fetching tags from upstream is important as the version information for KubeFlex binaries is derived from git tags. Without the tags, commands like kflex init -c (which initializes KubeFlex and creates a kind cluster) will not work correctly.

Setting Up a Testing Cluster for KubeFlex

To prepare a hosting cluster for testing, execute the following script. This script accomplishes several key tasks:

Creates a new kind cluster specifically designed for the KubeFlex hosting environment.
Configures nginx ingress with SSL passthrough capabilities to ensure secure communication.
Builds and loads the KubeFlex Controller Manager image into the kind cluster.
Installs a PostgreSQL database, providing the default backend for hosted API servers.
Starts the KubeFlex controller manager.

test/e2e/setup-kubeflex.sh

Locally building cmupdate image

make ko-build-local-cmupdate

Manually building and publishing cmupdate image

LATEST_TAG=<tag used for image> make ko-build-push-cmupdate

Steps to make release

Delete branch “brew” from https://github.com/kubestellar/kubeflex, if there is such a branch.
Make sure that the go-version parameter of actions/setup-go in .github/workflows/goreleaser.yml is high enough. It is enough that its minor version is not below the in go.mod.
git checkout main and make sure it (a) equals main in https://github.com/kubestellar/kubeflex and (b) is what you want to release.
check existing tags e.g.,
```
git tag
v0.1.0
v0.1.1
v0.2.0
...
v0.3.1
```
create a new tag e.g.
```
git tag v0.3.2
```
Push the tag upstream
```
git push upstream --tag v0.3.2
```
Wait until goreleaser completes the release process.
Invoke the E2E test workflow on the release just made (e.g, using the GitHub web UI). See if it succeeds. If not then there is a problem that needs to be remedied and a newer release made.
The goreleaser workflow will also create a branch named brew with some changes (to the homebrew instsall script) that need to get merged into main. Make a PR to merge brew into main, and get it approved and merged.
To avoid leaving a time bomb, delete that brew branch after it was merged into main (the goreleaser will fail to create the new brew branch if already exists).