Knative – CLI tools

V0.23-Docs: Installing kn

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This guide provides details about how you can install the Knative kn CLI.

Install kn using brew

For macOS, you can install kn by using Homebrew.

brew install knative/client/kn

Install kn using a binary

You can install kn by downloading the executable binary for your system and placing it in the system path.

A link to the latest stable binary release is available on the kn release page.

Install kn using the nightly-built binary

Nightly-built executable binaries are available for users who want to install the latest pre-release build of kn.

WARNING: Nightly-built executable binaries include features which may not be included in the latest Knative release and are not considered to be stable.

Links to the latest nightly-built executable binaries are available here:

Install kn using Go

Check out the kn client repository:

git clone https://github.com/knative/client.git
cd client/

Build an executable binary:
```
hack/build.sh -f
```
Move kn into your system path, and verify that kn commands are working properly. For example:
```
kn version
```

Running kn using container images

WARNING: Nightly container images include features which may not be included in the latest Knative release and are not considered to be stable.

Links to images are available here:

You can run kn from a container image. For example:

docker run --rm -v "$HOME/.kube/config:/root/.kube/config" gcr.io/knative-releases/knative.dev/client/cmd/kn:latest service list

NOTE: Running kn from a container image does not place the binary on a permanent path. This procedure must be repeated each time you want to use kn.

Using kn with Tekton

See the Tekton documentation.

V0.23-Docs: Customizing kn

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

You can customize your kn CLI setup by creating a config.yaml configuration file. You can provide this configuration by using the --config flag, otherwise the configuration is picked up from a default location. The default configuration location conforms to the XDG Base Directory Specification, and is different for Unix systems and Windows systems.

If the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable is set, the default configuration location that kn looks for is $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kn.
If the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable is not set, kn looks for the configuration in the home directory of the user at $HOME/.config/kn/config.yaml.
For Windows systems, the default kn configuration location is %APPDATA%\kn.

Example configuration file

plugins:
  path-lookup: true
  directory: ~/.config/kn/plugins
eventing:
  sink-mappings:
  - prefix: svc
    group: core
    version: v1
    resource: services

Where

path-lookup specifies whether kn should look for plugins in the PATH environment variable. This is a boolean configuration option. The default value is false.
directory specifies the directory where kn will look for plugins. The default path depends on the operating system, as described above. This can be any directory that is visible to the user.
sink-mappings defines the Kubernetes Addressable resource that is used when you use the --sink flag with a kn CLI command.
- prefix: The prefix you want to use to describe your sink. Service, svc, channel, and broker are predefined prefixes in kn.
- group: The API group of the Kubernetes resource.
- version: The version of the Kubernetes resource.
- resource: The plural name of the Kubernetes resource type. For example, services or brokers.

V0.23-Docs: kn plugins

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The kn CLI supports the use of plugins. Plugins enable you to extend the functionality of your kn installation by adding custom commands and other shared commands that are not part of the core distribution of kn.