Kubernetes Dashboard Podman Desktop Extension

Kubernetes Dashboard is an open source extension for Podman Desktop to monitor Kubernetes clusters.

The Kubernetes Dashboard detects your Kubeconfig file, and connects to the current Kubernetes context. Any change of Kubernetes context (either from Podman Desktop or by editing the Kubeconfig file with another tool) is detected by the dashboard, which disconnects from the previous current context and connects to the new one.

Resources

A Dashboard page provides a synthetic view of the main resources present in the Kubernetes context:

• non-namespaced resources: nodes and namespaces,
• namespaced resources: workloads (deployments, pods, jobs, cronjobs), services (services, ingresses, routes) and configuration and storage (persistent volume claims, configmaps, secrets).

You can access from the dashboard, or from the menu, the list of resources of a specific kind (for example, the list of Pods).

From this list, you have access to the details for a specific resource, including:

• a summary of the resource (extracted from the metadata, spec and status of the resource),
• a raw JSON representation of the resource,
• a utility to patch the resource definition, using strategic merge patch.

For Pods, you also have access to:

• the logs of the containers running in the pod,
• a terminal on each container running in the pod.

You can switch the namespace you want to explore from the Dashboard page or from any list of namespaced resources. The extension will disconnect from the previous namespace and connect to the new one.

Port forwardings

From the Summary page of Deployments, Pods and Services, you can create port forwardings on exposed ports.

A dedicated page lists the existing port forwardings, from which you can visit each port forward in your browser, and manage them (delete).

Permissions

The Kubernetes Dashboard checks Read permissions on each resource, and indicates in the Dashboard and in the pages listing the resources if the current user does not have read access on a resource.

Annotations

The user interface supports configuration using annotations on resources. The following annotations are supported:

On Pods

• kubernetes-dashboard.podman-desktop.io/logs-colors: "log level colors"
  Colorize logs levels (by default)
• kubernetes-dashboard.podman-desktop.io/logs-colors: "no colors"
  Disable colorization of logs
• kubernetes-dashboard.podman-desktop.io/logs-timestamps: "true"
  Prefix the logs of the pod's containers with timestamps.
• kubernetes-dashboard.podman-desktop.io/logs-tail-lines: "10"
  Fetch the last n lines of the logs only.
• kubernetes-dashboard.podman-desktop.io/logs-since-seconds: "60"
  Fetch the logs emitted since n seconds only.

Compatibility

The Kubernetes Dashboard extension is compatible with Podman Desktop v1.26.0 and later. The Kubernetes Dashboard internal to Podman Desktop is deactivated when this extension is installed and active.

Installation

Install latest release

Install the custom extension ghcr.io/podman-desktop/podman-desktop-extension-kubernetes-dashboard:latest to try the latest extension.

Development version

Install the custom extension ghcr.io/podman-desktop/podman-desktop-extension-kubernetes-dashboard:next to try the extension published after each commit.

Contributing

First clone this repository on your disk, then run pnpm i in the root directory of the sources, then watch the changes in the packages/webview directory:

$ git clone git@github.com:podman-desktop/extension-kubernetes-dashboard.git
$ cd extension-kubernetes-dashboard
$ pnpm i
[...]
$ cd packages/webview
$ pnpm watch
[ do not stop this command, as it waiting for changes to rebuild the webview ]

Using the production version of Podman Desktop

• In Settings > Preferences, in the Extensions section, enable the Development mode
• In Extensions > Local Extensions, select Add a local folder extension... and select the sub-directory packages/extension of the sources you cloned previously.

You can now make changes to the sources. The project is composed of two parts, which are built separately: the extension code, and the webview code. The extension code is rebuilt after each change by Podman Desktop itself, and the webview part is rebuilt by the pnpm watch command you started previously.

Note that when you only change code in the webview part, the webview is built, and the result is included in the extension, which triggers the rebuild of the extension.

After each change, you may have to restart the extension from the Extensions > Local Extensions page.

Running e2e tests

On macOS (Apple Silicon)

Pre-requisites

• Install Go and kubectl:

brew install go kubectl

• Add Go binaries to your PATH (also add this to your ~/.zshrc):

export PATH="$PATH:$(go env GOPATH)/bin"

• Install envtest tools:

go install github.com/feloy/envtest-start@v0.1.0
go install sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/tools/setup-envtest@release-0.22

Run the tests

Step 1: Install a Podman Desktop testing binary

Download and install the latest nightly build from https://github.com/podman-desktop/testing-prereleases:

LATEST_TAG=$(gh api repos/podman-desktop/testing-prereleases/releases \
  --jq 'sort_by(.created_at) | reverse | first(.[] | select(.assets | length > 0)) | .tag_name')

gh release download "$LATEST_TAG" \
  --repo podman-desktop/testing-prereleases \
  --pattern 'podman-desktop-[0-9]*-arm64.dmg'

hdiutil attach podman-desktop-[0-9]*-arm64.dmg -mountpoint /tmp/podman-desktop-dmg
mkdir -p tests/playwright/tests/PodmanDesktop
cp -R "/tmp/podman-desktop-dmg/Podman Desktop.app" "tests/playwright/tests/PodmanDesktop/Podman Desktop.app"
hdiutil detach /tmp/podman-desktop-dmg
codesign --force --deep --sign - "tests/playwright/tests/PodmanDesktop/Podman Desktop.app"

Step 2: Build the extension plugin

pnpm install
pnpm build

podman build -t local_image -f build/Containerfile ./
CONTAINER_ID=$(podman create localhost/local_image --entrypoint "")
mkdir -p tests/playwright/tests/playwright/output/kubernetes-dashboard-tests/plugins
podman export $CONTAINER_ID | tar -x -C tests/playwright/tests/playwright/output/kubernetes-dashboard-tests/plugins/
podman rm -f $CONTAINER_ID
podman rmi -f localhost/local_image:latest

Step 3: Start the envtest Kubernetes cluster

export KUBEBUILDER_ASSETS=$(setup-envtest use -p path)

envtest-start --users 1 /tmp/envtest-kubeconfig &
ENVTEST_START_PID=$!

while [ ! -f /tmp/envtest-kubeconfig ]; do sleep 1; done
"$KUBEBUILDER_ASSETS/kubectl" --kubeconfig /tmp/envtest-kubeconfig get all | grep "service/kubernetes"

Step 4: Run the tests

cp /tmp/envtest-kubeconfig tests/resources/envtest-kubeconfig
cp /tmp/user1-kubeconfig tests/resources/envtest-kubeconfig-user1

EXTENSION_PREINSTALLED=true \
PODMAN_DESKTOP_BINARY="$(pwd)/tests/playwright/tests/PodmanDesktop/Podman Desktop.app/Contents/MacOS/Podman Desktop" \
KUBEBUILDER_ASSETS="$KUBEBUILDER_ASSETS" \
NODE_OPTIONS=--no-experimental-strip-types \
pnpm test:e2e:integration

Step 5: Stop the cluster when done

kill $ENVTEST_START_PID

Restarting the tests

Quick restart — the extension is already installed in the Podman Desktop profile; only the cluster needs to be restarted: redo steps 3 and 4, keeping EXTENSION_PREINSTALLED=true.

Full clean restart (e.g. after modifying extension sources) — after stopping the cluster, reset the Podman Desktop profile and reinstall the extension from scratch:

rm -rf tests/playwright/tests/playwright/

Then redo steps 2, 3, and 4.

Cleanup

After stopping the cluster (step 5), remove all generated files:

rm -rf tests/playwright/tests/
rm -f tests/resources/envtest-kubeconfig tests/resources/envtest-kubeconfig-user1
rm -f /tmp/envtest-kubeconfig /tmp/user1-kubeconfig