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Installing kubectl

Next, we are going to install kubectl, the official Kubernetes CLI.

Despite the Educates CLI wrapping most of the needed functionality to interact with our dedicated Educates cluster later-on, kubectl will come in handy whenever we want to have a closer look at how things work within the platform.

kubectl is available from package managers for almost all common operating systems.

Installing kubectl on Linux

On the Debian, RedHat, and SUSE families of operating systems, kubectl can be installed via native package management. On other Linux flavors, the release binaries can be downloaded instead.

Installing kubectl with Native Package Managers

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gnupg
curl -fsSL https://pkgs.k8s.io/core:/stable:/v1.31/deb/Release.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/kubernetes-apt-keyring.gpg
sudo chmod 644 /etc/apt/keyrings/kubernetes-apt-keyring.gpg
echo 'deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/kubernetes-apt-keyring.gpg] https://pkgs.k8s.io/core:/stable:/v1.31/deb/ /' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list
sudo chmod 644 /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y kubectl

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/kubernetes.repo
[kubernetes]
name=Kubernetes
baseurl=https://pkgs.k8s.io/core:/stable:/v1.31/rpm/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://pkgs.k8s.io/core:/stable:/v1.31/rpm/repodata/repomd.xml.key
EOF
sudo yum install -y kubectl

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/zypp/repos.d/kubernetes.repo
[kubernetes]
name=Kubernetes
baseurl=https://pkgs.k8s.io/core:/stable:/v1.31/rpm/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://pkgs.k8s.io/core:/stable:/v1.31/rpm/repodata/repomd.xml.key
EOF
sudo zypper update
sudo zypper install -y kubectl

Installing kubectl from GitHub

kubectl can be installed from release binaries:

Installing kubectl from release binaries
# For AMD64 / x86_64
[ $(uname -m) = x86_64 ] && curl -sSLO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"
# For ARM64
[ $(uname -m) = aarch64 ] && curl -sSLO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/arm64/kubectl"
chmod +x kubectl
sudo mv kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl

Installing kubectl on MacOS and Windows

On MacOS and Windows, kubectl can be installed with multiple available package managers:

brew install kubectl

sudo port selfupdate
sudo port install kubectl

choco install kubernetes-cli
cd ~
mkdir .kube
cd .kube
New-Item config -type file

scoop install kubectl
cd ~
mkdir .kube
cd .kube
New-Item config -type file

winget install -e --id Kubernetes.kubectl
cd ~
mkdir .kube
cd .kube
New-Item config -type file

Testing kubectl

To test if the installation kubectl has been successful, spin up a terminal and run the following command:

Testing kubectl
kubectl version --client

The output should look like this:

Output
kubectl version --client

Client Version: v1.31.1
Kustomize Version: v5.4.2