Core ArgoCD install

[cstanislawski]

I was browsing the repository looking for ways to contribute. I stumbled upon the fact that the ArgoCD is installed via Helm, and while it's generally convenient, wouldn't the ArgoCD core install manifests - docs - be more appropriate for argocd-diff-preview use case? Was this considered before?

While playing around with a local cluster & just deploying ArgoCD via Helm vs via the kubectl with core install, I got a consistent speedup of 12s (40s vs 52s) across 10 runs (5 core, 5 helm) while using the values-override.yaml on my m3 macbook pro.

Btw I looked into how the implementation would look like if both cases were to be supported - and imo it wouldn't be great due to at least a few discrepancies. Naturally, kubectl binary would have to be added to the container image which would add ~30MB.

[cstanislawski]

fyi I'd be happy to undertake this once confirmed it'd be nice to move forward with this (either supporting both cases, or just the core) - let me know what you think @dag-andersen 🙏

[dag-andersen]

Hi @cstanislawski

I was browsing the repository looking for ways to contribute.

Amazing! ✨

wouldn't the ArgoCD core install manifests - docs - be more appropriate for argocd-diff-preview use case? Was this considered before?

Originally, the project moved towards using the Helm chart so users could customize their installation however they wanted. Different users configure their real Argo CD instances in a variety of ways, and it was a high priority for me to ensure that they could recreate the same setup inside argocd-diff-preview. I also assume most people install Argo CD through a Helm chart in their production clusters, so I wanted them to be able to simply copy-paste their value-files into argocd-diff-preview to ensure identical renders.

About half a year ago, we had a good example of this when a user wanted to enable a specific Kustomize feature in Argo CD. I could technically add each of those features manually when someone requests them, but that would require a lot of ongoing work and maintenance. By switching to Helm, I no longer have to manage these individual customizations - it's all handled by the chart. You can see an example of this in this issue 🚀

So that was the historical reason.

Maybe it could be beneficial to have an option like --core that only installs the most basic Argo CD setup - and people could use that by default if they do not want to override any custom config.

I’d like to avoid adding the kubectl binary back into the image. Currently, the tool applies raw YAML to the cluster using the Kubernetes client library, and I assume the Argo CD core manifests can be passed to the same functions and installed that way. But I’m no expert - I’m still fairly new to Go :)

BUT! i think the helm chart stuff can be tweaked with better default values to maybe speed up the process... currently it is suspiciously slow 🫠 I think there might be some annoying status checks that slow it down

Hope this gives a bit more insight into my thought process ✨

[cstanislawski]

Alright, thank you for all the info, I'll think & play around with it a bit & submit a PR :)