Contributing

We welcome contributions from the community. This page explains how to get started and where to find help.

Getting started

Before contributing, please read the project's Contributing Guidelines in the repository. In particular:

• Contributor License Agreement (CLA) — You must sign the Kubernetes CLA before we can accept your pull requests.
• Kubernetes Contributor Guide — Main contributor documentation; you can jump to the contributing page.
• Contributor Cheat Sheet — Common resources for existing developers.

The Kubernetes community abides by the CNCF Code of Conduct.

Development workflow

From the repository root:

• Build: make build
• Format: make fmt
• Lint / vet: make lint
• Tests: make test (writes cover.out for coverage)
• Test coverage: make test writes cover.out. Run make test-cover to refresh tests and emit out/coverage.html and out/coverage.txt (go tool cover). With cover.out present, make cover-func prints a per-function summary and make cover-html opens the interactive HTML report in a browser (local). Remove generated artifacts with make cover-clean.
• Generate manifests: make manifests generate

E2E tests

• Set up Kind cluster: make setup-test-e2e (creates a Kind cluster with a local container registry via hack/create-kind-cluster.sh)
• Deploy operator: make deploy-test-e2e (builds, pushes to local registry, deploys to Kind)
• Run e2e tests: make test-e2e
• Tear down: make cleanup-test-e2e

OLM bundle

The operator supports installation via OLM (Operator Lifecycle Manager). The bundle is auto-generated from existing kustomize manifests — only the CSV skeleton in config/manifests/bases/ is maintained manually.

• Generate bundle: make bundle
• Build bundle image: make bundle-build
• Push bundle image: make bundle-push

To run OLM bundle e2e tests (tests all four install modes: OwnNamespace, SingleNamespace, MultiNamespace, AllNamespaces):

• Deploy: make deploy-test-e2e-bundle (creates Kind cluster with registry, builds/pushes images, installs OLM)
• Run tests: make test-e2e-bundle

After making changes, open a pull request on GitHub. Ensure CI passes and address any review feedback.

Mentorship

• Mentoring Initiatives — Kubernetes offers mentorship programs and is always looking for volunteers.

Bug reports

Bug reports should be filed as GitHub Issues on this repo.

Communications

• Slack channel (#sig-apps)
• Mailing List

For meeting schedules and additional community information, see the SIG Apps README.