This is NOT a verb-noun wrapper for kubectl. This is a simple, opinionated alias to kubectl.

specialK is designed to add PowerShell object functionality to kubectl while maintaining original syntax and output. For any command combinations that are supported, it calls kubectl directly and converts the output to PowerShell objects. For any command combinations not supported, it calls kubectl directly. This means that if you are familiar with kubectl, then you'll be familiar with specialK. If you learn specialK, then you'll be familiar with kubectl (and miss the objectification if you switch back to bash).

This is so true-to-source that it even works with kubectl's PowerShell auto-completion (you just need to install it with Add-specialKAutoCompletion).

• Installation
• Available Commands
• Usage Example
• Current Objectized Outputs
• Building specialK
• ChangeLog

This module requires kubectl to be downloaded and available in the working directory or in the PATH variable. You can find directions in the kubernetes documentation.

The module itself is installed just like any other module:

Install-Module specialK -Repository PSGallery

The module itself contains 2 commands:

• k
• Add-specialKAutoCompletion

k is an advanced alias for kubectl. For supported command combinations, it will convert the output to a PowerShell object. See Current Objectified outputs for the full list.

Add-specialKAutoCompletion is a simple command that calls kubectl completion powershell and replaces kubectl with k to allow for kubectl autocompletion in specialK. specialK does not modify any kubectl syntax, so vanilla autocompletion works perfectly.

A simple listing of the pods

k get pod

Output:

NAME                                     READY STATUS  RESTARTS AGE
----                                     ----- ------  -------- ---
blah-db-deployment-584189c448-6cszs      1/1   Running 0        3d13h
blah-monitor-deployment-7f4d5524cf-wj7nr 1/1   Running 0        21h
blah-monitor-deployment-85f748721d-7qxbq 1/1   Running 0        21h
blah-web-deployment-74bbf734b-4sdps      1/1   Running 0        21h
blah-web-deployment-74bbf734b-gs4mt      1/1   Running 0        21h
blah-web-deployment-74bbf734b-nc8kd      1/1   Running 0        21h
blah-web-deployment-74bbf734b-qddmr      1/1   Running 0        21h

Notice the PowerShell table headers? That means you can do:

k get pods | ?{$_.Name -like 'blah-web*'} | %{kubectl exec $_.Name -- date}

This commands also demonstrates a current limitation of specialK. Since PowerShell doesn't pass -- as a parameter, running k exec pod-name -- command will skip the --. In the future, this will be fully supported and there is no issue switching back to calling plain kubectl for this use case.

You can also:

k config get-contexts | ?{$_.name -like '*staging*'} | %{k config use-context $_.name}

These kubectl command combinations are currently supported:

• get: pod, deployment, node, service, events, namespace
• top: pod, node
• config: get-contexts, get-clusters, get-users

Do be aware that adding support for additional command combinations is incredibly easy. The formats are all generated at build time using a script, which you can review: formatUpdater.ps1.

Building specialK requires the InvokeBuild module, which can be installed from the PowerShell Gallery:

Install-Module InvokeBuild

To build the module, ensure your working directory is the root of the repository and run:

Invoke-Build -Task modulebuild

Be aware that the formats are generated by default. If you want to skip this step, be sure to use the -ReuseFormats switch. However, this requires that you already have a k.format.ps1xml file in the build\specialK directory in the repository.

Invoke-Build -Task modulebuild -ReuseFormats

This is something that could be improved, so feel free to submit a PR that improves this process.

• Added support for -o wide
• Added support for --all-namespaces

• Improved parameter handling
• Improved parsing decision logic
• Added get events to objectized output
• Added get namespace to objectized output (#5, thanks @Relinator)
• Added support for plural subcommands on the get command (#2, thanks @Relinator)

• Fixed issue from the switch to semicolons.

• Now internally uses ; as the delimiter to generate the objects, improving output for services with multiple ports.

• Minor change to build script to preserve the private data on build (Tags, ProjectUri, LicenseUri)

Initial release