The Argo Ecosystem: Tailoring Your Installation Through Community Add-ons

Argo CD is a lightweight and stable project that allows users to manage Kubernetes applications. The project is extensible and allows for the addition of new features through annotations. The Argo Proj Labs is a sister organization that hosts ecosystem projects from the community that complement the core projects. These ecosystem projects enhance the Argo CD experience and provide users with more options to manage their applications.

• Annotations allow for the expansion of a resource's spec without implementing functionality into the core controller logic
• Adding features through annotations allows for independent projects, higher development velocity, and earlier access to features
• Argo Proj Labs hosts ecosystem projects that complement the core projects and enhance the Argo CD experience
• The Argo CD Image Updater tool monitors container registries for new image tags and updates the git repo for Argo CD to deploy them
• Application Sets automate the creation of many applications, making it easier to manage hundreds of clusters or monorepos

One of the ecosystem projects that enhance the Argo CD experience is the Argo CD Image Updater tool. This tool monitors container registries for new image tags and updates the git repo for Argo CD to deploy them. This allows for updates to be facilitated by image pushes, making it easier to manage applications without having to connect to the Kubernetes cluster or Argo CD server. Another ecosystem project is Application Sets, which automates the creation of many applications. This is useful for managing hundreds of clusters or monorepos.

You are probably already familiar with the core set of Argo projects such as Workflows, CD, Rollouts, and Events. But did you know there is also an entire suite of ecosystem projects which complement these core offerings? These operators unlock support for additional features including notifications, docker registry integration, git writeback, cluster bootstrapping/add-on management, all in a composable way. In this talk, we showcase many of the Argo community projects which will supercharge your Argo installation by providing features outside of the base functionality. Discover ways to custom tailor your setup according to your organization’s needs. Learn about new and upcoming enhancements to make Argo CD even more extensible, including a redesigned config management plugin system, UI component library, and UI/API extensions. Finally, learn how you can even leverage Argo engines and building blocks in your own operators to gain new capabilities, completely independent of Argo!