Kustomize

Kustomize Overview

Kustomize is a declarative configuration customization tool for Kubernetes that focuses on composable modifications and reuse of existing YAML without using templates. By defining bases, overlays, patches, and generators in kustomization.yaml, it can flexibly generate final deployment manifests for different environments.

Core features and highlights:

• Supports ConfigMap/Secret generators that can automatically inject version or environment information
• Provides strategic-merge and json6902 patches for precise resource modifications
• Supports bases, overlays, components, and transformers for layered reuse
• Seamlessly integrates with kubectl (e.g., kubectl kustomize) and can also be used as a standalone CLI

Use cases and target users

• Managing multi-environment (dev/stage/prod) deployments and configuration differences
• Generating final manifests in GitOps and CI/CD pipelines to apply to clusters
• Platform engineers, SREs, Kubernetes operators, and application development teams

Main advantages or highlights

Kustomize