Multi-base deployment with kustomize edit set image issue

Build single deployment with image tag for production overlays

(cd overlays/production/ && kustomize edit set image my-app=*:0.0.1 && kustomize build)

Output:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: my-app
  namespace: my-app-production
spec:
  replicas: 4
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: my-app
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: gcr.io/my-platform/my-app:0.0.1
        name: my-app

Build single deployment with image tag for staging overlays

(cd overlays/staging && kustomize edit set image my-app=*:0.0.1 && kustomize build)

Output:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: my-app
  namespace: my-app-staging
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: my-app
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: gcr.io/my-platform/my-app:0.0.1
        name: my-app

Note: above 2 commands modifies the production kustomization.yaml and staging/kustomization.yaml so before running the below command to create deployment for production & staging, remove newTag from these files i.e.

images:
- name: my-app
  newName: gcr.io/my-platform/my-app
  newTag: 0.0.1

Build deployment for staging and production with image tag

(cd overlays/ && kustomize edit set image my-app=*:0.0.1 && kustomize build)

Output:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: my-app
  namespace: my-app-production
spec:
  replicas: 4
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: my-app
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: gcr.io/my-platform/my-app
        name: my-app
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: my-app
  namespace: my-app-staging
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: my-app
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: gcr.io/my-platform/my-app
        name: my-app

As you can see the image tag is not present in the output

The reason why kustomize edit set image doesn't work is because it only updates the tag in current directory. After running above command if you check the overlays/kustomization.yaml, you'll see the image newTag was added.

Solutions

1. cd into each deployment and the run kustomize edit set image and popd to run the multibase kustomization. But it might be too much if there are many deployments of a same app with different names.

2. Use image label and replace it using sed command, it will sovle the issue but that's not the kustomize way