Migration from go/v3 to go/v4

Make sure you understand the differences between Kubebuilder go/v3 and go/v4 before continuing.

Please ensure you have followed the installation guide to install the required components.

The recommended way to migrate a go/v3 project is to create a new go/v4 project and copy over the API and the reconciliation code. The conversion will end up with a project that looks like a native go/v4 project layout (latest version).

However, in some cases, it’s possible to do an in-place upgrade (i.e. reuse the go/v3 project layout, upgrading the PROJECT file, and scaffolds manually). For further information see Migration from go/v3 to go/v4 by updating the files manually

Initialize a go/v4 Project

Create a new directory with the name of your project. Note that this name is used in the scaffolds to create the name of your manager Pod and of the Namespace where the Manager is deployed by default.

$ mkdir migration-project-name
$ cd migration-project-name

Now, we need to initialize a go/v4 project. Before we do that, we’ll need to initialize a new go module if we’re not on the GOPATH. While technically this is not needed inside GOPATH, it is still recommended.

go mod init tutorial.kubebuilder.io/migration-project

Now, we can finish initializing the project with kubebuilder.

kubebuilder init --domain tutorial.kubebuilder.io --plugins=go/v4

Migrate APIs and Controllers

Next, we’ll re-scaffold out the API types and controllers.

kubebuilder create api --group batch --version v1 --kind CronJob

Migrate the APIs

Now, let’s copy the API definition from api/v1/<kind>_types.go in our old project to the new one.

These files have not been modified by the new plugin, so you should be able to replace your freshly scaffolded files by your old one. There may be some cosmetic changes. So you can choose to only copy the types themselves.

Migrate the Controllers

Now, let’s migrate the controller code from controllers/cronjob_controller.go in our old project to the new one.

Migrate the Webhooks

Now let’s scaffold the webhooks for our CRD (CronJob). We’ll need to run the following command with the --defaulting and --programmatic-validation flags (since our test project uses defaulting and validating webhooks):

kubebuilder create webhook --group batch --version v1 --kind CronJob --defaulting --programmatic-validation

Now, let’s copy the webhook definition from api/v1/<kind>_webhook.go from our old project to the new one.

Others

If there are any manual updates in main.go in v3, we need to port the changes to the new main.go. We’ll also need to ensure all of needed controller-runtime schemes have been registered.

If there are additional manifests added under config directory, port them as well. Please, be aware that the new version go/v4 uses Kustomize v5x and no longer Kustomize v4. Therefore, if added customized implementations in the config you need to ensure that them can work with Kustomize v5 and/if not update/upgrade any breaking change that you might face.

In v4, installation of Kustomize has been changed from bash script to go get. Change the kustomize dependency in Makefile to

.PHONY: kustomize
kustomize: $(KUSTOMIZE) ## Download kustomize locally if necessary. If wrong version is installed, it will be removed before downloading.
$(KUSTOMIZE): $(LOCALBIN)
	@if test -x $(LOCALBIN)/kustomize && ! $(LOCALBIN)/kustomize version | grep -q $(KUSTOMIZE_VERSION); then \
		echo "$(LOCALBIN)/kustomize version is not expected $(KUSTOMIZE_VERSION). Removing it before installing."; \
		rm -rf $(LOCALBIN)/kustomize; \
	fi
	test -s $(LOCALBIN)/kustomize || GOBIN=$(LOCALBIN) GO111MODULE=on go install sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/kustomize/v5@$(KUSTOMIZE_VERSION)

Change the image name in the Makefile if needed.

Verification

Finally, we can run make and make docker-build to ensure things are working fine.