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 uses Kubernetes API by default to check if the service endpoint is ready. No port required. Use label katenary.v3/depends-on: legacy to use the old netcat method (requires port).

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](labels.md).

Work with Depends On?

Katenary creates initContainer to wait for dependent services to be ready. By default, it uses the Kubernetes API to check if the service endpoint has ready addresses - no port required.

version: "3"

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

  database:
    image: mariadb
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: foobar

If you need the old netcat-based method (requires port), add the katenary.v3/depends-on: legacy label to the dependent service:

version: "3"

services:
  webapp:
    image: php:8-apache
    depends_on:
      - database
    labels:
      katenary.v3/depends-on: legacy

  database:
    image: mariadb
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: foobar
    ports:
      - 3306:3306

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.