Comparisons with Similar Packages/Tools
This page compares Kele with some of its peer packages.
kubernetes-el
Note
The author of Kele is a co-maintainer of kubernetes-el.
kubernetes-el is a Kubernetes cluster management package for Emacs. It draws heavy inspiration from Magit, from its “status page”-centric interface design down to its prevalent use of Transient-based keybindings.
Design Philosophy
Kele draws heavy inspiration from kubernetes-el. It takes lessons learned during kubernetes-el development and strives for a cluster management experience that is lighter-weight, more agile, and more fluidly integrated with the native Emacs environment.
Kele aims for a Kubernetes cluster management experience that is less intrusive, requires less context-switching, and is overall more performant than kubernetes-el.
Permissions
kubernetes-el assumes a high level of privilege over the managed clusters,
e.g. the ability to list namespaces. This is a simplifying assumption that
obviously does not hold in all cases.
Kele learns from this limitation by dynamically enabling/disabling specific
keybindings depending on reported permissions from the cluster under
management. For example, if you do not have permission to list Pods, then the
l keybinding within the kele-resource Transient prefix will be disabled.
Support for custom resources
One of kubernetes-el’s biggest limitations is its lack of support for custom
resources. This limitation imposes a very low ceiling on
the package’s utility. The root causes extend to kubernetes-el’s hard-coded
and incomplete support for the Kubernetes core API (see
kubernetes-el/kubernetes-el#306). Overhauling the
associated design decisions would amount, in my co-maintainer’s opinion, to a
complete rewrite of kubernetes-el – hence my decision to kick off development
on Kele.
Kele was implemented to support custom resources from day one. To the fullest extent possible, “core” resources (Pods, Deployments, etc.) are treated in exactly the same way as custom resources. Almost all resource-specific functionality, e.g. display logic and commands, are implemented generically.
kubel
kubel is a similar “UI-centric” cluster management package to kubernetes-el. Its advantage over kubernetes-el is its accommodation of users with limited privilege/permissions within the clusters in question.
Similar to kubernetes-el, Kele focuses on providing a cluster management experience that is more “piecemeal” (“get this targeted piece of information as quickly as possible and move on with your life”) and requires less context-switching – unavoidable with a status-page-centric user interface – than kubel.