The state of Package Management on Kubernetes – An in-depth comparison of Helm, Timoni & Glasskube
Package Management on Kubernetes is one of the most pressing issues in the Cloud Native community. A concept which is widely known from other ecosystems like desktop and mobile computing has not yet been realized for cloud computing. In order to solve this issue, we released our Open Source, Apache 2.0 licensed, package manager Glasskube in the beginning of 2024. Glasskube has already more than 600 stars and is part of the CNCF landscape. In this session, we will learn about the different possibilities for deploying cloud-native applications into a Kubernetes cluster and its configuration options, dependency management, upgrade possibilities, and backups. We will take a look at the inner workings of Helm from both a distributor and user perspective. How can a distributor create a package and distribute it, and how can a user install and use the packages? In addition to Helm, we will provide a brief overview of Timoni, which uses OCI images as package bundles, and compare the advantages and challenges of this approach. We will also introduce https://glasskube.dev – that is designed as a cloud-native application itself and features real dependency management, ArgoCD integration, unified updates, and a GUI. During a live demo we will try out Glasskube and explore the possibilities of using Glasskube in combination with Argo CD and also showcase the possibility to use Apples pkl configuration language to create and maintain type-safe Glasskube packages.
Speaker
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Philip MiglinciGlasskube OS GmbHPhilip is Co-Founder of Glasskube, an Open Source Developer Tooling company that develops https://glasskube.dev – The next generation package manager for Kubernetes.
He is an active Speaker (KCD Austria 2023, DevOps Metups, etc) and community member of DevOps ecosystem in Vienna, Austria.Philip holds a Bachelor’s degree in computer science and economics from the Vienna University of Technology and a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering, for which he built a PCR test automation platform as his master’s thesis, together with the Austrian Institute of Technology (Pre-COVID when nobody knew what a PCR test was). Before working on Glasskube, Philip helped build up the alerting infrastructure for firefighting organizations in Austria and Germany as CTO.