kubectl krew¶

ID: krew
Home page: https://krew.sigs.k8s.io
Version requirement: >= 0.4
Platforms: 🅱️ BSD · 🐧 Linux · 🍎 macOS · ⨂ Unix · 🪟 Windows
Operations: installed · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync
purl types: pkg:krew
CLI names (lookup order): kubectl-krew · krew
Forced environment: NO_COLOR=1
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: krew
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/krew.toml

krew is the plugin manager of kubectl (https://krew.sigs.k8s.io), installed as the kubectl-krew binary and driven either directly or as kubectl krew.

krew list branches on whether stdout is a terminal: piped, as mpm always runs it, it prints the sorted plugin names one per line and nothing else, while an interactive run gets a PLUGIN/VERSION table instead. The parser below reads the piped form, so installed plugins carry no version. That is a deliberate upstream choice (the !isTerminal(os.Stdout) branch of cmd/krew/cmd/list.go), not a limitation mpm can work around.

No outdated: krew compares nothing against its index short of running the upgrade, so the operation is left undeclared and upgrade --all still works.

What `mpm` adds to `krew`¶

Through mpm, krew gains --exact and --extended search, to narrow to exact names or match descriptions.

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover krew alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your `krew` commands, in `mpm`¶

You already know krew: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With `krew`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`kubectl-krew list`	`mpm --krew installed`
Search for a package	`kubectl-krew search <query>`	`mpm --krew search <query>`
Install a package	`kubectl-krew install <package_id>`	`mpm install pkg:krew/<package_id>`
Upgrade one package	`kubectl-krew upgrade <package_id>`	`mpm --krew upgrade <package_id>`
Upgrade everything	`kubectl-krew upgrade`	`mpm --krew upgrade --all`
Remove a package	`kubectl-krew uninstall <package_id>`	`mpm remove pkg:krew/<package_id>`

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations¶

Operation	Supported	Notes
`installed`	✓
`outdated`
`orphans`
`search`	✓	exact and extended search backfilled by `mpm`
`install`	✓
`upgrade`	✓
`upgrade_all`	✓
`remove`	✓
`sync`	✓
`cleanup`
`doctor`

Selecting and configuring `krew`¶

Deselect krew for a single run with --no-krew, or persist the choice in your configuration:

[mpm]
krew = false

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every krew call, so runs stay quiet, non-interactive and reproducible: the defaults you would set in CI anyway.

Keep it enabled but tune how mpm drives it with a per-manager override:

[mpm.managers.krew]
timeout = 900

mpm config-template krew prints every overridable attribute as a ready-to-paste block.

Recipes¶

A few jobs you would otherwise script around krew, one mpm command each:

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --krew dump krew.toml, then mpm restore krew.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --krew sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation¶

mpm runs this manager as the current user and never prepends sudo by default. Flip the policy for its privileged operations with --sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

None of its operations needs root.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

State of kubectl krew’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

Registry: Git-manifest indexes
Retraction: Index revert: reverting the manifest, Portfile or derivation commit withdraws the version
Publish date: ❌ only the commit date, which is client-set and trivially backdated

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --allow-unsupported-managers opts back in.

Version probe¶

The version is probed by running:

$ kubectl-krew --version
OPTION            VALUE
GitTag            v0.4.4
GitCommit         343e657
IndexURI          https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/krew-index.git
BasePath          /home/kev/.krew
IndexPath         /home/kev/.krew/index/default
InstallPath       /home/kev/.krew/store
BinPath           /home/kev/.krew/bin
DetectedPlatform  linux/amd64

and extracted with:

r"GitTag\s+v?(?P<version>\S+)"

Reference traces¶

Raw native outputs captured in the bundled definition: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know kubectl krew well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ kubectl-krew list
access-matrix
ctx
ns
tree

$ kubectl-krew search {query}
NAME           DESCRIPTION                                          INSTALLED
access-matrix  Show an RBAC access matrix for server resources      yes
ktop           A top-like tool for your Kubernetes clusters         no
tree           Show sub-resources of the Kubernetes object          yes

Feed any of these through mpm and the raw output becomes one uniform table, the same shape for every manager: filter it, project columns, or export it (mpm --krew installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Changelog¶

7.7.0.dev0 (unreleased)
- Add the krew kubectl plugin manager with installed, search, install, upgrade, remove and sync support. Its piped listing carries no version, which is an upstream branch on whether stdout is a terminal.