kube-diff

kube-diff

A CLI tool that compares local Kubernetes manifests (plain YAML, Helm charts, Kustomize overlays) against the actual state in your cluster, providing clear, colorized diffs with a summary report.

For detailed documentation, see the docs/ folder: Usage | Configuration | Deployment | Development

Why kube-diff?

Quick Start

Install

# Homebrew
brew install somaz94/tap/kube-diff

# Krew (kubectl plugin)
kubectl krew install diff2

# Binary
curl -sL https://github.com/somaz94/kube-diff/releases/latest/download/kube-diff_linux_amd64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv kube-diff /usr/local/bin/

Basic Usage

# Compare YAML manifests against cluster
kube-diff file ./manifests/

# Compare Helm chart
kube-diff helm ./my-chart --values values-prod.yaml --release my-release

# Compare Kustomize overlay
kube-diff kustomize ./overlays/production

Example Output

★ NEW    ConfigMap/app-config (namespace: production)
~ CHANGED Deployment/web-app (namespace: production)
--- cluster
+++ local
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 spec:
-  replicas: 2
+  replicas: 3
✓ OK     Service/web-svc (namespace: production)

Summary: 3 resources — 1 changed, 1 new, 1 unchanged

Exit Codes

Roadmap

• Phase 1 (MVP): Plain YAML file input, cluster comparison, colorized diff, summary
• Phase 2: Helm chart support (helm template integration)
• Phase 3: Kustomize support (kustomize build integration)
• Phase 4: CI report output (JSON, Markdown)
• Phase 5: GitHub Action wrapper (somaz94/kube-diff-action)
• Phase 6: Label selector filtering

Project Structure

cmd/                    # CLI entry point & Cobra commands
internal/
  source/               # Manifest loaders (file, helm, kustomize)
  cluster/              # K8s dynamic client fetcher
  diff/                 # Normalization & unified diff
  report/               # Color/JSON/Markdown output

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 — see the LICENSE file for details.