Drop dependency on k8s.io/kubernetes

[howardjohn]

Kubernetes intentionally ships a broken go.mod file to discourage people from depending on k8s.io/kubernetes (see kubernetes/kubernetes#79384). As a result, in order to depend on operator-sdk, we must go through major hacks to get go modules working.

Is it feasible to drop this dependency?

kubernetes/kubernetes#79384 (comment) indicates it may be possible to move the controller library out of k8s.io/kubernetes, and I think the only other usage is kubectl which can already use k8s.io/api and k8s.io/kubectl

[joelanford]

@howardjohn I would love to drop the dependency on k8s.io/kubernetes. Last I checked, the only reason k8s.io/kubernetes is required by operator-sdk is because of a transitive dependency from Helm (which is mentioned in kubernetes/kubernetes#79384).

Based on the discussion in helm/helm#6606, it sounds like only Helm 3 will be targeted, which will mean some moderate refactoring in this project's helm-operator to facilitate this. That's not a huge concern, because we're planning to bump to Helm 3 anyway.

Lastly, it is possible we will have to wait on a controller-runtime release that supports the same version of Kubernetes that the Helm 3 release that removes this dependency supports.

[joelanford]

Looks like operator-framework/operator-lifecycle-manager also requires k8s.io/kubernetes, so we'll have to look into dropping that dependency there too.

[egaudet]

When trying to use operator-sdk v1.12.0 to create example app-operator, the dependency on k8s.io/api v0.0.0 makes it so that "go get" fails. What is the recommended approach?

[joelanford]

@egaudet Do you mind filing a new issue with the specific commands you're trying to run?

[egaudet]

@joelanford Turned out to be running the go get command from a directory with a go.mod that doesn't have the k8s dependencies (i.e. replace). I was trying to test out doc generation from the project https://github.com/ahmetb/gen-crd-api-reference-docs so I was running in that directory. Running elsewhere and I don't see the problem. Thanks!

BTW, is there any other recommended way to generate API docs?

[openshift-bot]

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[openshift-bot]

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[bcmills]

/remove-lifecycle rotten