Project archived

Kubernetes distributes its own kubectl binaries for Windows now. You should use them instead.

Running kubectl on Windows

Why??

It's nice to be able to run kubectl remotely against a kubernetes cluster. Then, you don't have to ssh into the servers to run commands. (Also, you won't need to run kubectl from a Linux VM, which is what other people suggest.) You'll probably need commands like mkdir (provided through cygwin or a standard git installation with cygwin binaries included). But you might also be able to use the pre-built binary without these tools. (I'm not sure, really)

Download a pre-built Windows binary

See releases, download kubectl.exe, and put kubectl.exe somewhere in your PATH.

Configuring kubectl to use a remote kubernetes cluster

1. cd C:\users\yourusername (Or wherever your %HOME% directory is)
2. mkdir .kube
3. cd .kube
4. touch config
5. Edit the config file with your editor of choice - notepad for example.

It could for example look like this:

apiVersion: v1
clusters:
- cluster:
    server: https://123.456.789.123:9999
    certificate-authority-data: yoursertificate
  name: your-k8s-cluster-name
contexts:
- context:
    cluster: your-k8s-cluster-name
    namespace: default
    user: admin
  name: default-context
current-context: default-context
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users:
- name: admin
  user:
    token: your-login-token

Do It Yourself (aka. building from source)

You can also try to build it yourself:

1. Set up a Go environment.
2. Set your GOPATH environment variable. For these instructions we will use C:\gopath but %USERPROFILE%\go is more common.
3. Add %GOPATH\bin to your PATH environment variable (exes like godep will be placed here and kubectl by the end of the install process)
4. Make a directory to clone kubernetes: mkdir C:\gopath\src\k8s.io then cd C:\gopath\src\k8s.io
5. View release tags and choose the release you wish to build (like v1.5.0)
6. Checkout kubernetes using the release tag you choose -- we're using v1.5.0 in this example: git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes v1.5.0
7. Install Godep (for dependency management) and mercurial (for fetching some dependencies)
8. Fetch GO dependencies: cd C:\gopath\src\k82.io\kubernetes\ then godep restore (If some dependencies fail, it might work anyways. Note this may take awhile - up to 10 min)
9. Build kubectl cd C:\gopath\src\k8s.io\kubernetes\cmd\kubectl then go install . (Note this may take awhile - up to 10 min)
10. The kubectl binary should now be at C:\gopath\bin\kubectl.exe