If you are using a released version of Kubernetes, you should refer to the docs that go with that version.
The latest release of this document can be found [here](http://releases.k8s.io/release-1.1/docs/devel/development.md).Documentation for other releases can be found at releases.k8s.io.
This document is intended to be the canonical source of truth for things like supported toolchain versions for building Kubernetes. If you find a requirement that this doc does not capture, please file a bug. If you find other docs with references to requirements that are not simply links to this doc, please file a bug.
This document is intended to be relative to the branch in which it is found. It is guaranteed that requirements will change over time for the development branch, but release branches of Kubernetes should not change.
Official releases are built in Docker containers. Details are here. You can do simple builds and development with just a local Docker installation. If you want to build go code locally outside of docker, please continue below.
Kubernetes is written in the Go programming language. If you haven't set up a Go development environment, please follow these instructions to install the go tools and set up a GOPATH.
Requires Go version 1.4.x or 1.5.x
Below, we outline one of the more common git workflows that core developers use. Other git workflows are also valid.
- Go to https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes
- Click the "Fork" button (at the top right)
The commands below require that you have $GOPATH set ($GOPATH docs). We highly recommend you put Kubernetes' code into your GOPATH. Note: the commands below will not work if there is more than one directory in your $GOPATH
.
mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/k8s.io
cd $GOPATH/src/k8s.io
# Replace "$YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME" below with your github username
git clone https://github.com/$YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/kubernetes.git
cd kubernetes
git remote add upstream 'https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes.git'
git checkout -b myfeature
# Make your code changes
git fetch upstream
git rebase upstream/master
Note: If you have write access to the main repository at github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes, you should modify your git configuration so that you can't accidentally push to upstream:
git remote set-url --push upstream no_push
Before committing any changes, please link/copy these pre-commit hooks into your .git directory. This will keep you from accidentally committing non-gofmt'd go code.
cd kubernetes/.git/hooks/
ln -s ../../hooks/pre-commit .
Then you can commit your changes and push them to your fork:
git commit
git push -f origin myfeature
- Visit https://github.com/$YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/kubernetes
- Click the "Compare and pull request" button next to your "myfeature" branch.
- Check out the pull request process for more details
Upon merge, all git commits should represent meaningful milestones or units of work. Use commits to add clarity to the development and review process.
Before merging a PR, squash any "fix review feedback", "typo", and "rebased" sorts of commits. It is not imperative that every commit in a PR compile and pass tests independently, but it is worth striving for. For mass automated fixups (e.g. automated doc formatting), use one or more commits for the changes to tooling and a final commit to apply the fixup en masse. This makes reviews much easier.
See Faster Reviews for more details.
Kubernetes uses godep to manage dependencies. It is not strictly required for building Kubernetes but it is required when managing dependencies under the Godeps/ tree, and is required by a number of the build and test scripts. Please make sure that godep
is installed and in your $PATH
.
There are many ways to build and host go binaries. Here is an easy way to get utilities like godep
installed:
-
Ensure that mercurial is installed on your system. (some of godep's dependencies use the mercurial source control system). Use
apt-get install mercurial
oryum install mercurial
on Linux, or brew.sh on OS X, or download directly from mercurial. -
Create a new GOPATH for your tools and install godep:
export GOPATH=$HOME/go-tools
mkdir -p $GOPATH
go get github.com/tools/godep
- Add $GOPATH/bin to your path. Typically you'd add this to your ~/.profile:
export GOPATH=$HOME/go-tools
export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin
Here's a quick walkthrough of one way to use godeps to add or update a Kubernetes dependency into Godeps/_workspace. For more details, please see the instructions in godep's documentation.
- Devote a directory to this endeavor:
Devoting a separate directory is not required, but it is helpful to separate dependency updates from other changes.
export KPATH=$HOME/code/kubernetes
mkdir -p $KPATH/src/k8s.io/kubernetes
cd $KPATH/src/k8s.io/kubernetes
git clone https://path/to/your/fork .
# Or copy your existing local repo here. IMPORTANT: making a symlink doesn't work.
- Set up your GOPATH.
# Option A: this will let your builds see packages that exist elsewhere on your system.
export GOPATH=$KPATH:$GOPATH
# Option B: This will *not* let your local builds see packages that exist elsewhere on your system.
export GOPATH=$KPATH
# Option B is recommended if you're going to mess with the dependencies.
- Populate your new GOPATH.
cd $KPATH/src/k8s.io/kubernetes
godep restore
- Next, you can either add a new dependency or update an existing one.
# To add a new dependency, do:
cd $KPATH/src/k8s.io/kubernetes
go get path/to/dependency
# Change code in Kubernetes to use the dependency.
godep save ./...
# To update an existing dependency, do:
cd $KPATH/src/k8s.io/kubernetes
go get -u path/to/dependency
# Change code in Kubernetes accordingly if necessary.
godep update path/to/dependency/...
If go get -u path/to/dependency
fails with compilation errors, instead try go get -d -u path/to/dependency
to fetch the dependencies without compiling them. This can happen when updating the cadvisor dependency.
- Before sending your PR, it's a good idea to sanity check that your Godeps.json file is ok by running
hack/verify-godeps.sh
If hack/verify-godeps.sh fails after a godep update
, it is possible that a transitive dependency was added or removed but not
updated by godeps. It then may be necessary to perform a godep save ./...
to pick up the transitive dependency changes.
It is sometimes expedient to manually fix the /Godeps/godeps.json file to minimize the changes.
Please send dependency updates in separate commits within your PR, for easier reviewing.
- If you updated the Godeps, please also update
Godeps/LICENSES
by runninghack/update-godep-licenses.sh
.
cd kubernetes
hack/test-go.sh
Alternatively, you could also run:
cd kubernetes
godep go test ./...
If you only want to run unit tests in one package, you could run godep go test
under the package directory. For example, the following commands will run all unit tests in package kubelet:
$ cd kubernetes # step into the kubernetes directory.
$ cd pkg/kubelet
$ godep go test
# some output from unit tests
PASS
ok k8s.io/kubernetes/pkg/kubelet 0.317s
Currently, collecting coverage is only supported for the Go unit tests.
To run all unit tests and generate an HTML coverage report, run the following:
cd kubernetes
KUBE_COVER=y hack/test-go.sh
At the end of the run, an the HTML report will be generated with the path printed to stdout.
To run tests and collect coverage in only one package, pass its relative path under the kubernetes
directory as an argument, for example:
cd kubernetes
KUBE_COVER=y hack/test-go.sh pkg/kubectl
Multiple arguments can be passed, in which case the coverage results will be combined for all tests run.
Coverage results for the project can also be viewed on Coveralls, and are continuously updated as commits are merged. Additionally, all pull requests which spawn a Travis build will report unit test coverage results to Coveralls. Coverage reports from before the Kubernetes Github organization was created can be found here.
You need an etcd in your path. To download a copy of the latest version used by Kubernetes, either
- run
hack/install-etcd.sh
, which will download etcd tothird_party/etcd
, and then set yourPATH
to includethird_party/etcd
. - inspect
cluster/saltbase/salt/etcd/etcd.manifest
for the correct version, and then manually download and install it to some place in yourPATH
.
cd kubernetes
hack/test-integration.sh
See End-to-End Testing in Kubernetes.
To run benchmark tests, you'll typically use something like:
$ godep go test ./pkg/apiserver -benchmem -run=XXX -bench=BenchmarkWatch
The -run=XXX
prevents normal unit tests for running, while -bench
is a regexp for selecting which benchmarks to run.
See go test -h
for more instructions on generating profiles from benchmarks.
hack/update-generated-docs.sh