Kustomize

GitHub repository ↗ synced 2026/8/9

Awesome Kustomize

A curated and collaborative list of awesome Kustomize resources.

Kustomize introduces a template-free way to customize Kubernetes manifests. It's extensible and uses a purely declarative approach to configuration customization, helping you efficiently manage your Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

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Markdown:

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Preview:

Overview

Kustomize works as a standalone binary and is also built into kubectl (since v1.14). It can be used with off-the-shelf applications, such as Helm charts. Also, it has deep integration with various GitOps tools, such as ArgoCD, Flux, and others.

Plugins

Kustomize has 3 plugin types: generator, transformer, and validator.

Note

If you are a plugin developer, it's highly recommended to support the new plugins standard
KRM function.

Generators

Secretize

Generating Kubernetes Secret from various sources. It's like a Swiss Army knife, but for Kubernetes secrets (Containerized KRM, Exec KRM, Exec).

SopsSecretGenerator

Generating Secrets from sops-encrypted files (Exec KRM, Exec).

KSops

Generating Secrets from sops-encrypted files (Exec).

PolicyGenerator

Generating Open Cluster Management policies (Exec).

KRMFfnBuiltin

Running builtin generators transformers (Exec).

Merger

Generating manifests seamlessly by extending Kustomize merge strategies using schemaless StrategicMerge (Containerized KRM, Exec KRM).

Transformers

HelmValuesTransformer

Transforming values in HelmRelease CustomResource. It helps manage many HelmRelease values in a single transformer file (Exec).

TemplateTransformer

Providing a set of KRM Functions to run built-in transformers in place (Containerized KRM, Exec KRM).

Validators

KubeconformValidator

Validating Kubernetes manifests using embedded Kubeconform (Containerized KRM, Exec KRM).

Guides

Kustomize guides based on their level or type, like 📰 Article, 📺 Video, 🧪 Lab.

Novice

📰 Declarative Management of Kubernetes Objects Using Kustomize - The official Kubernetes documentation task for Kustomize.
📰 Configure Kubernetes with Kustomize - A guide helps to get started with Kustomize, understand its intended use cases, and find resources for using it with other Google Cloud tools.
📺 Organizing the YAML mess with Kustomize - A talk shows how Kustomize could help to manage Kubernetes YAML files with a growing number of services and environments.
📺 Kustomize: Deploy Your App with Template Free YAML - A talk introduces Kustomize, a declarative application management system that allows deployments to be described as template-free YAML.

Intermediate

🧪 ArgoCD GitOps Tutorial - Working with Kustomize - A hands-on lab covers using Kustomize in GitOps, and it goes through the Kustomize syntax and deploying a Kustomized application.
📰 3 ways to customize off-the-shelf Helm charts with Kustomize - A guide covers 3 different ways to use Kustomize and Helm together.
📰 Using Kustomize Components with Cluster API - A clear use case of using Kustomize Components.

Advanced

📰 Advanced Kustomize features - A guide covers more than 5 advanced Kustomize capabilities.
📰 Set OpenAPI patch strategy for Kubernetes Custom Resources - A guide shows how to provide a schema to control the patch strategy of the CRDs.
📺 Customizing Kustomize with Client-Side Custom Resources - A talk covers extending Kustomize via plugins to address common yet idiosyncratic application needs.
📺 Own your YAML: extending Kustomize via Plugins - A talk shows how to create custom resources using Kustomize external plugins.
📰 Kustomize Enhancement with KRM Functions - A detailed guide covers the KRM concept and how to use it in Kustomize plugins.

Tips & Tricks

📰 Delete a manifest from a Kustomize base - A handy way to delete a named manifest using Kustomize patch.
📰 Apply Kustomize builtin transformers on a single resource - A way to use internal transformers on specific resources.
📰 Pass extra data to the Containerized KRM function - Different cases of sharing data with the Containerized KRM function.

Snippets

Add Pod security context

Ensure the security context is added to containers in the Pod.

Snippets are Kustmoize use-case-specific examples that can help with common day-to-day operations.

Misc

Asdf-kustomize

Kustomize plugin for asdf version manager.