alt Hacker NewsI really want something that is Docker Compose but for Kubernetes. I mean that I can have a simple way to declaring resources in just like Docker Compose, but I run the environment in Kubernetes so that I can get to test the behaviors when there are multiple copies of the softwares running together. I do rely on Kubernetes heavily for distributed and networked software deployment, so it is even better if we can emulate things like latency or burstable packet loss so that we can do a controlled chaos test for reliability test. I tried Skaffold, Tilt, Devspaces and Devpod/Coder v2, none of them are really simple like Compose.
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Helm mostly does that. Not a huge fan of a text templating engine generating yaml but once you get your chart setup with a few variable inputs, you can continue using it for a bunch of other stuff with minimal new config.
The inputs (values) are yaml so you can make it look exactly like a Docker Compose file if you want (wouldn't be surprised if there's some charts floating around that do that)
This is a problem we, as a company, have thought about a lot, but we always concluded that Kubernetes is already the simplest abstraction of a distributed system that is feasible for the diverse needs that the biggest companies out there have.
We previously built a package manager for Kubernetes to abstract it in the simplest way possible `glasskube install app` but we failed because every abstraction needs to follow a "convention over configuration" pattern at some point. Also, we weren't able to monetize a package manager.
With Distr (https://github.com/distr-sh/distr), we have actually been able to help companies not only package but distribute and either manage or give their customers a way to self-manage applications. Our customers are able to land on-premises contracts at enterprises way faster than before, which is also a clear ROI for paying for Distr.
So, I don't think that you can get the flexibility of a distributed application orchestrator with a simple declarative YAML file if your target environments are diverse.