client/docs

kn

kn is the Knative command line interface (CLI).

Getting Started

Installing kn

You can grab the latest nightly binary executable for:

• Max OS X
• Linux AMD 64
• Windows AMD 64

Put it on your system path, and make sure it's executable.

Alternatively, check out the client repository, and type:

go install ./cmd/kn

Connecting to your cluster

You'll need a kubectl-style config file to connect to your cluster.

• Starting minikube writes this file (or gives you an appropriate context in an existing config file)
• Instructions for Google GKE
• Instructions for Amazon EKS
• Instructions for IBM IKS
• Instructions for Red Hat OpenShift.
• Or contact your cluster administrator.

kn will pick up your kubectl config file in the default location of $HOME/.kube/config. You can specify an alternate kubeconfig connection file with --kubeconfig, or the env var $KUBECONFIG, for any command.

Commands

See the generated documentation

Service Management

A Knative service is the embodiment of a serverless workload. It is generally in the form of a collection of containers running in a group of pods, in the underlying Kubernetes cluster. Each Knative service associates with a collection of revisions, which represent the evolution of that service.

With the Kn CLI a user can list, create, delete, and update Knative services. The detail reference of each sub-command under the service command shows the options and flags for this group of commands.

Examples:

# Create a new service from an image

kn service create mysvc --env KEY1=VALUE1 --env KEY2=VALUE2 --image dev.local/ns/image:latest

You are able to also specify the requests and limits of both CPU and memory when creating a service. See service create command reference for additional details.

# List existing services in the 'default' namespace of your cluster

kn service list

You can also list services from all namespaces or a specific namespace using flags: --all-namespaces and --namespace mynamespace. See service list command reference for additional details.

Revision Management

A Knative revision is a "snapshot" of the specification of a service. For instance, when a Knative service is created with the environment variable FOO=bar a revision is added to the service. Afterwards, when the environment variable is changed to baz or additional variables are added, a new revision is created. When the image that the service is running is changed to a new digest, a new revision is created.

With the revision command group you can list and describe the current revisions on a service.

Examples:

# Listing a service's revision

kn revision list --service srvc # CHECK this since current command does not have --service flag

Utilities

These are commands that provide some useful information to the user.

• The kn help command displays a list of the commands with helpful information.
• The kn version command will display the current version of the kn build including date and Git commit revision.
• The kn completion command will output a BASH completion script for kn to allow command completions with tabs.

Common Flags

For every Kn command you can use these optional common additional flags:

• -h or --help to display specific help for that command
• --config string which specifies the Kn config file (default is $HOME/.kn.yaml)
• --kubeconfig string which specifies the kubectl config file (default is $HOME/.kube/config)