kubectl debug-ide

A kubectl plugin to debug Pods with an IDE rather than the CLI.

⚠️ This plugin is in its alpha stage and is missing some important feature compared to kubectl debug. Running
the IDE in an ephemeral debugging container (rather than copying the target Pod) is not supported. Workloads other than
Pods aren't supported either.

How does kubectl debug-ide work?

Running kubectl debug-ide is similar to running kubectl debug (same flags) but an IDE is started and a git
repository is cloned within the debugging container.

The command returns the URL of the remote IDE (local IDE support is not implemented yet).
Opening the IDE URL in a browser allows debugging a process in the target container.

The IDE runs in the debugging container, but "local" debugging is possible as containers share the PID namespace.

Examples

Debug a Pod by creating a copy and adding an IDE

The following command creates a copy of the Pod $TARGET_POD. In the copy it adds a debugging container where a git
repository is cloned and an IDE is started.

TARGET_POD="outyet"
DEBUGGING_CONTAINER_IMG="ghcr.io/l0rd/outyet-dev:latest"
TARGET_POD_COPY="outyet-debug"
GIT_REPO="https://github.com/l0rd/outyet.git"

kubectl debug-ide $TARGET_POD \
  --image $DEBUGGING_CONTAINER_IMG \
  --copy-to $TARGET_POD_COPY \
  --share-processes \
  --git-repository $GIT_REPO

📣 The containers in the copy of target Pod share the PID namespace. This is helpful to attach the IDE debugger to
the target process as they run in separate containers.

Delete the debugging Pod

Delete the DevWorkspace Custom resource to stop the debugging session and cleanup the Kubernetes resources created by
kubectl debug-id:

TARGET_POD="outyet"
kubectl delete ${TARGET_POD}-dw

📣 kubectl delete pod doesn't work, the DevWorkspace Operator restarts the Pod.

Requirements

kubectl debug-ide creates DevWorkspace Custom Resources on the Kubernetes cluster. As such, to work, the
DevWorkspace Operator needs to be deployed on
the Kubernetes cluster.

Building kubectl-ide (and currently installing too) requires Go.

Installation

To install kubectl debug-ide clone this git repository and run go install:

$ go install cmd/kubectl-debug_ide.go

Shell completion

Copy the file ./kubectl_complete-ide somewhere on $PATH and give it executable permissions to enable shell
completion for the plugin.

📣 kubectl v1.26 or higher is required for shell completion to work for plugins.

Cleanup

You can "uninstall" this plugin from kubectl by simply removing it from your PATH:

$ rm  $GOBIN/kubectl-debug_ide

Acknowledgments

The awesome sample-cli-plugin was used to kick off this plugin.

kubectl debug-ide is just a generator of DevWorkspace Custom Resources. The heavy lifting, the Cloud Development
Environment provisioning, is done by the DevWorkspace Operator
❤️. Go check it out!