1. Install Local Kubernetes

Docker Desktop

Docker Desktop is our recommended option for local Kubernetes on Mac and Windows.

Please refer to their installation guide for how to download and install it (which is a pretty simple process).

Note: If you have an older version installed, you may need to update it in order to enable Kubernetes support.

Once installed, open Docker Desktop's preferences, go to the Kubernetes section, tick Enable Kubernetes and save.

MicroK8s

Garden can be used with MicroK8s on supported Linux platforms.

To install it, please follow their instructions.

Once installed, you need to add the microk8s configuration to your ~/.kube/config so that Garden knows how to access your cluster. We recommend exporting the config like this:

microk8s config > $HOME/.kube/microk8s.config

And then adding this to your .bashrc/.zshrc:

export KUBECONFIG=$HOME/.kube/microk8s.config:${KUBECONFIG:-$HOME/.kube/config}

You also need to ensure microk8s commands can be run by the user that's running Garden, so that Garden can get its status and enable required extensions if necessary. To do this, add your user to the microk8s group:

sudo usermod -a -G microk8s $USER   # or replace $USER with the desired user, if it's not the current user

Note that in-cluster building is currently not supported with microk8s clusters.

Minikube

For Minikube installation instructions, please see the official guide.

You may also want to install a driver to run the Minikube VM. Please follow the instructions here and note the name of the driver you use. The driver you choose will likely vary depending on your OS/platform. We recommend hyperkit for macOS and kvm2 on most Linux distributions.

Once Minikube and the appropriate driver for your OS are installed, you can start Minikube by running:

minikube start --vm-driver=<your vm driver>  # e.g. hyperkit on macOS

If you are working in a team and need to use an external registry, you can configure Garden with an external image registry such as ECR. Alternatively, you can enable Minikube's registry-creds addon, by following these steps:

1. Make sure Minikube is running by typing minikube start

2. Then run minikube addons configure registry-creds

3. Select applicable container registry

4. Enter credentials

5. Make sure you run minikube addons enable registry-creds

Minikube should now be able to authenticate with your chosen cloud provider.

kind

For kind installation instructions, see the official docs.

To use kind with Garden you may need to start your cluster with extra port mappings to allow ingress controllers to run (see their docs for more info):

cat <<EOF | kind create cluster --config=-
kind: Cluster
apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
nodes:
- role: control-plane
  kubeadmConfigPatches:
  - |
    kind: InitConfiguration
    nodeRegistration:
      kubeletExtraArgs:
        node-labels: "ingress-ready=true"
  extraPortMappings:
  - containerPort: 80
    hostPort: 80
    protocol: TCP
  - containerPort: 443
    hostPort: 443
    protocol: TCP
EOF

Alternatively, if you don't need an ingress controller, you can set setupIngressController: null in your local-kubernetes provider configuration and start the cluster without the above customization.

Note that in-cluster building is currently not supported with kind clusters.