What's New in Kargo v0.7.0

Kargo v0.7 is now available on GitHub! The Kargo community has been hard at work driving Kargo closer and closer to a GA release.

For users upgrading from v0.6.0, the transition to v0.7.0 is seamless. However, please note that there is no direct upgrade path from versions prior to v0.6.0.

Kargo is built to address the growing needs of modern DevOps and Platform Engineering teams. As Kubernetes adoption continues to rise, the complexity of managing deployments across multiple environments also increases. Kargo simplifies this complexity by providing a single, consistent GitOps-based workflow for deploying and managing applications.

This release is packed with exciting changes and features, designed to enhance your Kubernetes cluster management experience.

In this blog, we'll highlight the key updates in Kargo v0.7, but we encourage you to explore the full changelog for a comprehensive list of improvements.

ECR and Google Artifact Registry Support

One of the significant enhancements in Kargo v0.7 addresses the challenges users faced with ECR and Google Artifact Registry (GCR) repositories. Previously, accessing these repositories was problematic due to the lack of long-term credential options in ECR and the non-recommended long-term credentials in GCR.

In response to community feedback, Kargo v0.7 introduces new authentication methods:

• AWS Access Key ID & Secret Access Key or GCP Service Account Key: These can be used to obtain short-lived tokens, providing a workable solution for those using ECR or GCR while running Kargo outside of EKS or GKE.
• EKS Pod Identity & GKE Workload Identity Federation: These methods allow for obtaining short-lived tokens without involving any Secret, offering a more secure and streamlined approach.

The following example is for obtaining an authorization token that is valid for 12 hours. Kargo will obtain this token for you and cache it for 10 hours.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: myecr
  namespace: kargo
  labels:
    kargo.akuity.io/cred-type: image
stringData:
  awsAccessKeyID: myAwsAccessKeyID
  awsSecretAccessKey: myAwsSecretKey
  repoURL: aws_account_id.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/amazonlinux:latest

For detailed instructions on these new options, refer to the registry configuration documentation page.

Improved Artifact Discovery and Manual Freight Assembly

Kargo v0.7 enhances artifact discovery and manual freight assembly to address previous issues where:

• Rapid succession artifact pushes caused older versions to be missed.
• Related changes in different repositories led to invalid combinations of artifacts.

Key new features include:

• Discover Many Recent Versions: Warehouses now find multiple recent versions of each artifact that match the subscription criteria and constraints.
• Optional Automatic Freight Creation: Configure Warehouses to avoid automatic freight creation when new artifacts are found.
• Manual Freight Assembly: Select and combine discovered artifacts manually to create your own freight.
• Configurable Discovery Frequency: Adjust how often Warehouses search for new artifacts.
• Freight Deletion: Remove any unwanted freight easily.

These features provide greater control over artifact management, ensuring that your pipeline progresses smoothly with the right combinations of artifacts.

UI Improvements

Kargo v0.7 introduces several UI enhancements aimed at improving user experience:

• Expanded Warehouse View: Open a detailed view of a Warehouse by clicking on it, similar to Stages and Freights.
• Filter Application: Apply filters to the Freightline via a filter button on a Warehouse or by selecting a Warehouse from a dropdown.

• Abort and Retry Verifications: Perform these actions directly from the UI.
• New, Lighter Theme: Enjoy a refreshed, lighter visual theme.

These UI improvements make navigating and managing your clusters more intuitive and efficient.

Acknowledging New Community Contributors

Community contributions are the backbone of Kargo's continuous improvement. We are excited to welcome and acknowledge the following community members whose first contributions are included in this release:

• @wmiller112
• @akolacz

Thank you for your valuable contributions to making Kargo better!

Conclusion

Kargo v0.7 marks a significant milestone with its enhanced authentication options, improved artifact discovery, manual freight assembly, and various UI improvements. These new features and updates are designed to provide a more robust and user-friendly experience in managing your Kubernetes clusters.

Ready to take your Kubernetes deployments to the next level? Getting started with Kargo is easy. Visit our GitHub repository to explore the documentation, installation guides, and examples.

Join our Kargo community of early adopters and experience the future of Continuous Promotion using GitOps with Kargo. We are excited to see how Kargo will empower your teams to achieve faster, more reliable, and more secure deployments.

For any questions, feedback, or contributions, feel free to reach out to us. Together, let's build a better way to manage Kubernetes!