Using an unstructured repo

Creating an unstructured repo lets you organize your repo arbitrarily, without following the default repo directory structure. Config Sync syncs the same set of Kubernetes objects to your cluster as in the default, hierarchical, repo.

This feature lets you sync your existing Kubernetes configuration to your Config Sync repo. For example, if you want to sync a Helm chart to your cluster, you can run helm template and commit the rendered manifest to your repo. An unstructured repo also lets you create subfolders of resources.

Limitations

Unstructured repos have the following limitations:

Namespace-scoped objects

You can declare NamespaceSelectors in an unstructured repo. To declare a NamespaceSelector, add either the metadata.namespace or the NamespaceSelector annotation. Declaring both annotations is invalid. If namespace-scoped resources don't declare metadata.namespace or the NamespaceSelector annotation, then Config Sync uses the cluster's "default" namespace.

Unlike with an hierarchical repo, an unstructured repo does not have to declare all namespaces for the namespace-scoped objects in the repo. An object can define a metadata.namespace without having a matching namespace object in the repo. If the namespace already exists on the cluster, Config Sync creates the object within that namespace. If the namespace does not exist on the cluster yet, Config Sync creates the namespace implicitly.

In an unstructured repo, Objects that declare the NamespaceSelector annotation are applied to all namespaces that satisfy the NamespaceSelector's conditions. Before you create an unstructured repo with Objects that were previously used in a hierarchical repo, verify that your NamespaceSelectors do not apply to additional resources.

When you remove namespace-scoped objects from an unstructured repo, Config Sync deletes those objects, but it does not remove any namespaces that might have been created implicitly for those objects. This behavior happens because Config Sync can't infer when it's safe to delete a namespace that was created implicitly, so it's always left on the cluster.

Cluster-scoped objects

In an unstructured repo, ClusterSelectors function normally.

Configuring an unstructured repo

To configure an unstructured repo, set the value of spec.sourceFormat to unstructured in config-management.yaml.

For example, the following config-management.yaml sets up a Continuous Integration pipeline.

# config-management.yaml

apiVersion: configmanagement.gke.io/v1
kind: ConfigManagement
metadata:
  name: config-management
spec:
  # clusterName is required and must be unique among all managed clusters
  clusterName: my-cluster
  git:
    syncRepo: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/csp-config-management/ 
    syncBranch: 1.0.0
    secretType: ssh
    policyDir: ci-pipeline-unstructured
  sourceFormat: unstructured

What's next