Kubeapps(https://kubeapps.com/) radically help in simplifying deploying applications onto a K8S cluster.

We will test this on a kind cluster(kind create cluster)

Install helm if you don’t have it already using

brew install helm

Add the bitnami repo using - helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami

Create a namespace called as kubeapps - kubectl create namespace kubeapps

Install kubeapps using the command:

The output would be as below:

To access kubeapps, you will need a token, ideally an K8S API token but just for kind, we can create a service account and create a clusterrolebinding for it and then extract the token out of it.

To create a service account:

~ kubectl create serviceaccount kubeapps-operator

Now create a ClusterRoleBinding:

~ kubectl create clusterrolebinding kubeapps-operator --clusterrole=cluster-admin --serviceaccount=default:kubeapps-operator

Now extract the token from the secret created:

~ kubectl get secret $(kubectl get serviceaccount kubeapps-operator -o jsonpath='{range .secrets[*]}{.name}{"\n"}{end}' | grep kubeapps-operator-token) -o jsonpath='{.data.token}' -o go-template='{{.data.token | base64decode}}' && echo

Now do a port-forward using the command below

~ kubectl port-forward --namespace kubeapps service/kubeapps 8080:80

Copy the token to authenticate on the browser to see the page.

Let’s deploy Project Contour :

Search for contour under catalog :

This gives you the helm command for contour:

~ helm install my-contour bitnami/contour

Once done you could uninstall by using the command: