In Search Of A `kubectl blame` Command

Nick Santos at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2020

Developers want understandable tools. Their tools should tell them, “This change here broke that pod there.” But control loops drive the Kubernetes worldview. In a control loop, Kubernetes updates the cluster to make the actual state match desired state. Control loops do not track why the state changed. Nick Santos and the Tilt team tried to build a tool that traced the effects of each apply. He’ll tell stories about several attempts to propagate and assign blame across state changes. Most of them failed! Or broke Kubernetes updates in frustrating ways! Along the way, they learned about labels, informers, UIDs, owner refs, events, and how kubectl apply works internally. If you plan to write a tool that interprets Kubernetes API objects for humans, this talk is for you.

https://sched.co/ekAv