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GitOps Testing with Flux

Tutorial​

The following is a step-by-step walkthrough to test the automated application deployment and execution of Postman collections in a local Kind cluster.

Let’s start with setting things up for our GitOps-powered testing machine!

1. Fork the example repository and clone it locally.​

git clone https://github.com/$GITHUB_USER/testkube-flux.git

2. Start a Kubernetes cluster.​

You can use Minikube, Kind or any managed cluster with a cloud provider (EKS, GKE, etc). In this example we're using Kind.

kind create cluster

3. Create a Github Classic Token.​

Must be of type Classic (i.e. starts with ghp_).

GITHUB_TOKEN=<ghp_>
GITHUB_USER=<username>

And export the environment variables in your terminal.

4. Install Flux in the cluster and connect it to the repository.​

Install the Flux CLI and run:

flux bootstrap github \
--owner=$GITHUB_USER \
--repository=testkube-flux \
--path=cluster \
--personal

5. Create a Flux Source and a Kustomize Controller.​

The following command will create a Flux source to tell Flux to apply changes that are created in your repository:

flux create source git testkube-tests \
--url=https://github.com/$GITHUB_USER/testkube-flux \
--branch=main \
--interval=30s \
--export > ./cluster/flux-system/sources/testkube-tests/test-source.yaml

And now create a Flux Kustomize Controller to apply the Testkube Test CRDs in the cluser using Kustomize:

flux create kustomization testkube-test \
--target-namespace=testkube \
--source=testkube-tests \
--path="cluster/testkube" \
--prune=true \
--interval=30s \
--export > ./cluster/flux-system/sources/testkube-tests/testkube-kustomization.yaml

6. Install Testkube in the cluster.​

If you don't have the Testkube CLI, follow the instructions here to install it.

Run the following command to install Testkube and its components in the cluster:

testkube install

7. Create a Test CRD with Testkube CLI.​

In this example, the test being used is a Postman test, which you can find in /img/server/tests/postman-collection.json.

To create a Kubernetes CRD for the test, run:

testkube generate tests-crds img/server/tests/postman-collection.json > cluster/testkube/server-postman-test.yaml

Note: You can run Testkube from your CI/CD pipeline if you want to automate the creation of the Test CRDs.

8. Add the generated test to the Kustomize file.​

The name of the test file created in the previous step is server-postman-test.yaml. Add that to the Kustomize file located in cluster/testkube/kustomization.yaml:

apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
resources:
+ - server-postman-test.yaml

9. Push all the changes to your repository.​

git pull origin main
git add -A &amp;&amp; git commit -m "Configure Testkube tests"
git push

10. Your tests should be applied in the cluster.​

To see if Flux detected your changes run:

flux get kustomizations --watch

And to ensure that the test has been created run:

testkube get test
Expected output:
| NAME                    | TYPE               | CREATED                       | LABELS                                         |
| ----------------------- | ------------------ | ----------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- |
| postman-collection-test | postman/collection | 2023-01-30 18:04:13 +0000 UTC | kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/name=testkube-test |
|                         |                    |                               | kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/name=testkube-test |

11. Run your tests.​

Now that you have deployed your tests in a GitOps fashion to the cluster, you can use Testkube to run the tests for you through multiple ways:

  • Using the Testkube CLI.
  • Using the Testkube Pro Dashboard.
  • Running Testkube CLI from a CI/CD pipeline.

We'll use the Testkube CLI for brevity. Run the following command to run the recently created test:

testkube run test postman-collection-test

‍ And see the test result with:

testkube get execution postman-collection-test-1
Expected output:
Test execution completed with success in 13.345s

GitOps Takeaways​

Once fully realized - using GitOps for testing of Kubernetes applications as described above provides a powerful alternative to the more traditional approach where orchestration is tied to your current CI/CD tooling and not closely aligned with the lifecycle of Kubernetes applications.