Helm in Practice

GitOps: Tools and Ecosystem

GitOps is still relatively young, but the ecosystem around it is growing fast compared to other practices in the software delivery space. Several tools already make it practical to adopt in production environments.

Here are some of the most popular options:

• Flux - Flux continuously reconciles the desired state from Git with the actual state in your Kubernetes cluster. It supports Helm, Kustomize, and other deployment tools, and is considered one of the most mature GitOps controllers.

• Argo CD - Argo CD watches your Git repositories and keeps your cluster in sync automatically. It's part of the Argo project and is widely used for visual, declarative GitOps workflows. This is probably the most popular GitOps tool in the Kubernetes ecosystem today; hence, we will explore it in more detail later in this guide.

• Jenkins X - A Kubernetes-native CI/CD system that extends the classic Jenkins model with GitOps principles. It automates everything from builds to previews and deployments. Users familiar with Jenkins will make a smooth transition to Jenkins X.