katenary/doc/docs/usage.md

Basic Usage

Basically, you can use katenary to transpose a docker-compose file (or any compose file compatible with podman-compose and docker-compose) to a configurable Helm Chart. This resulting helm chart can be installed with helm command to your Kubernetes cluster.

For very basic compose files, without any specific configuration, Katenary will create a working helm chart using the simple command line:

katenary convert

This will create a chart directory with the helm chart inside.

But, in general, you will need to add a few configurations to help Katenary to transpose the compose file to a working helm chart.

There are two ways to configure Katenary:

• Using the compose files, adding labels to the services
• Using a specific file named katenary.yaml

The Katenary file katenary.yaml has benefits over the labels in the compose file:

• you can validate the configuration with a schema, and use completion in your editor
• you separate the configuration and leave the compose file "intact"
• the syntax is a bit simpler, instead of using katenary.v3/xxx: |- you can use xxx: ...

But: this implies that you have to maintain two files if the compose file changes.

For example. With "labels", you should do:

# in compose file
services:
    webapp:
        image: php:7-apache
        ports:
            - 8080:80
        environment:
            DB_HOST: database
        labels:
        katenary.v3/ingress: |-
            hostname: myapp.example.com
            port: 8080
        katenary.v3/map-env: |-
            DB_HOST: "{{ .Release.Name }}-database"

Using a Katenary file, you can do:

# in compose file, no need to add labels
services:
    webapp:
        image: php:7-apache
        ports:
            - 8080:80
        environment:
            DB_HOST: database

# in katenary.yaml
webapp:
    ingress:
        hostname: myapp.example.com
        port: 8080

    map-env:
        DB_HOST: "{{ .Release.Name }}-database"

!!! Warning "YAML in multiline label"

Compose only accept text label. So, to put a complete YAML content in the target label,
you need to use a pipe char (`|` or `|-`) and to **indent** your content.

For example :

```yaml
  labels:
    # your labels
    foo: bar
    # katenary labels with multiline
    katenary.v3/ingress: |-
      hostname: my.website.tld
      port: 80
    katenary.v3/ports: |-
      - 1234
```

Katenary transforms compose services this way:

• Takes the service and create a "Deployment" file
• if a port is declared, Katenary creates a service (ClusterIP)
• if a port is exposed, Katenary creates a service (NodePort)
• environment variables will be stored inside a ConfigMap
• image, tags, and ingresses configuration are also stored in values.yaml file
• if named volumes are declared, Katenary create PersistentVolumeClaims - not enabled in values file
• depends_on needs that the pointed service declared a port. If not, you can use labels to inform Katenary

For any other specific configuration, like binding local files as ConfigMap, bind variables, add values with documentation, etc. You'll need to use labels.

Katenary can also configure containers grouping in pods, declare dependencies, ignore some services, force variables as secrets, mount files as configMap, and many others things. To adapt the helm chart generation, you will need to use some specific labels.

For more complete label usage, see the labels page.

!!! Info "Overriding file"

It could be sometimes more convinient to separate the
configuration related to Katenary inside a secondary file.

Instead of adding labels inside the `compose.yaml` file,
you can create a file named `compose.katenary.yaml` and
declare your labels inside. Katenary will detect it by
default.

**No need to precise the file in the command line.**

Make conversion

After having installed katenary, the standard usage is to call:

katenary convert

It will search standard compose files in the current directory and try to create a helm chart in "chart" directory.

!!! Info Katenary uses the compose-go library which respects the Docker and Docker-Compose specification. Keep in mind that it will find files exactly the same way as docker-compose and podman-compose do it.

Of course, you can provide others files than the default with (cumulative) -c options:

katenary convert -c file1.yaml -c file2.yaml

Some common labels to use

Katenary proposes a lot of labels to configure the helm chart generation, but some are very important.

!!! Info For more complete label usage, see the labels page.

Work with Depends On?

Kubernetes does not provide service or pod starting detection from others pods. But Katenary will create initContainer to make you able to wait for a service to respond. But you'll probably need to adapt a bit the compose file.

See this compose file:

version: "3"

services:
    webapp:
        image: php:8-apache
        depends_on:
            - database

    database:
        image: mariadb
        environment:
            MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: foobar

In this case, webapp needs to know the database port because the depends_on points on it and Kubernetes has not (yet) solution to check the database startup. Katenary wants to create a initContainer to hit on the related service. So, instead of exposing the port in the compose definition, let's declare this to Katenary with labels:

version: "3"

services:
    webapp:
        image: php:8-apache
        depends_on:
            - database

    database:
        image: mariadb
        environment:
            MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: foobar
        labels:
            katenary.v3/ports: |-
                - 3306

Declare ingresses

It's very common to have an Ingress resource on web application to deploy on Kubernetes. It allows exposing the service to the outside of the cluster (you need to install an ingress controller).

Katenary can create this resource for you. You just need to declare the hostname and the port to bind.

services:
    webapp:
        image: ...
        ports: 8080:5050
        labels:
            katenary.v3/ingress: |-
                # the target port is 5050 wich is the "service" port
                port: 5050
                hostname: myapp.example.com

Note that the port to bind is the one used by the container, not the used locally. This is because Katenary create a service to bind the container itself.

Map environment to helm values

A lot of framework needs to receive service host or IP in an environment variable to configure the connection. For example, to connect a PHP application to a database.

With a compose file, there is no problem as Docker/Podman allows resolving the name by container name:

services:
    webapp:
        image: php:7-apache
        environment:
            DB_HOST: database

    database:
        image: mariadb

Katenary prefixes the services with {{ .Release.Name }} (to make it possible to install the application several times in a namespace), so you need to "remap" the environment variable to the right one.

services:
    webapp:
        image: php:7-apache
        environment:
            DB_HOST: database
        labels:
            katenary.v3/mapenv: |-
                DB_HOST: "{{ .Release.Name }}-database"

    database:
        image: mariadb

This label can be used to map others environment for any others reason. E.g. to change an informational environment variable.

services:
    webapp:
        #...
        environment:
            RUNNING: docker
        labels:
            katenary.v3/mapenv: |-
                RUNNING: kubernetes

In the above example, RUNNING will be set to kubernetes when you'll deploy the application with helm, and it's docker for "Podman" and "Docker" executions.