3 Useful Kubernetes Developer Tools

We have multiple clusters and namespaces: some for production, some for load testing, and some for development. In the course of our day-to-day development, we’ve found a number of useful tools that improve our productivity.

(ProTip: A productivity killer is typing

… in the wrong cluster. The first two tools below help address that problem.)

• kubectx/kubens, which lets you easily switch between clusters and namespaces.
• kube-ps1, which adds the current Kubernetes context and namespace to your Bash or zsh prompt (along with the Kubernetes logo).
• Stern, which lets you tail multiple pods or containers on your cluster. Stern color codes the output so you can tell what’s going on with each of your pods.

Here’s an example of Kube-PS1 and stern: