Consider Homebrew as the macOS distribution method

[ahmetb]

It seems like Krew was added to Homebrew formulae list. and it's currently available to users. Without documenting it, I suspect most people won't install it via brew.

Sadly, Krew is designed to install and update itself, just like any other kubectl plugin. We don't wish to support installation via other package managers as krew is a package manager itself (and while Krew is cross-platform, others aren't).

Homebrew makes sense for binaries like kubectl, but krew has extra installation instructions.

My recommendation would be to get Krew removed from Homebrew in the short term.
Any help is appreciated.

/priority P1

[glensc]

Created draft PR for removal: Homebrew/homebrew-core#49428

holler there if it's decided removal is the way to proceed.

[glensc]

@ahmetb PS: I'd prefer if you just ping me using @glensc handle rather send a private email. thanks.

[ahmetb]

Sorry about that I wasn't planning on creating an issue initially here.

[ahmetb]

So according to the discussion at Homebrew/homebrew-core#49428:

• Homebrew distributes other package managers like NPM, Gradle, Snapcraft –so Krew is not an exception
• There's a sentiment (probably stems from the tradition that) as the upstream, we don't get to dictate how we're packaged and distributed.

For the short term, I recommend we take these actions:

• Make sure Homebrew formula is in good shape, but don't commit to maintaining it.
• Start keeping in mind the case of "Krew does not always manage itself" while developing the self-upgrade machinery.
• Homebrew builds currently don't inject -ldflags about Version and GitCommit, so the krew version command is currently showing unknown for those values.

It seems like organically we got >400 downloads on Homebrew in the past 30-days alone. We might make it the recommended solution if or when:

• we are comfortable with time-to-release new version on Homebrew (e.g. are brew bots able to pick up a new tag within 24h)
• we integrate our Download Analytics pipeline to also pull from Homebrew Analytics API
• we are comfortable with the upgrade machinery not making assumptions on krew managing krew.

Until then we don't document Homebrew, but we also don't prevent users from using it.

⚠️ That said, I don't want this to set a precedent for other OSes/Distros:

I am negative about not being able to control distribution of a pre-1.0 software like this. I don't want us to maintain 5 different Linux distro package managers as well as Windows (Chocolatey). That's something Kubernetes project in general does not do (and it is deferred to the user community to package it up).

/retitle Consider Homebrew as the macOS distribution method

/area platform/mac
/area distribution

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[ahmetb]

/lifecycle frozen