A script that lets you add the current Kubernetes context and namespace configured on kubectl to your Bash/Zsh prompt strings (i.e. the $PS1).

Inspired by several tools used to simplify usage of kubectl.

Homebrew package manager:

brew update
brew install kube-ps1

AUR Package available at https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/kube-ps1/.

https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh

kube-ps1 is included as a plugin in the oh-my-zsh project. To enable it, edit your ~/.zshrc and add the plugin:

plugins=(
  kube-ps1
)
PROMPT='$(kube_ps1)'$PROMPT # or RPROMPT='$(kube_ps1)'

Update .zshrc with:

zinit light jonmosco/kube-ps1
PROMPT='$(kube_ps1)'$PROMPT # or RPROMPT='$(kube_ps1)'

Install kube-ps1 in zsh, bash, or fish with one click.

1. Clone this repository
2. Source the kube-ps1.sh in your ~/.zshrc or your ~/.bashrc

source /path/to/kube-ps1.sh
PROMPT='$(kube_ps1)'$PROMPT # or RPROMPT='$(kube_ps1)'

source /path/to/kube-ps1.sh
PS1='[\u@\h \W $(kube_ps1)]\$ '

The default prompt assumes you have the kubectl command line utility installed. Official installation instructions and binaries are available:

Install and Set up kubectl

If using this with OpenShift, the oc tool needs installed. It can be obtained from brew ports:

brew install openshift-cli

or the source can be downloaded:

OC Client Tools

Set the binary to oc with the following variable:

KUBE_PS1_BINARY=oc

If neither binary is available, the prompt will print the following:

(<symbol>|BINARY-N/A:N/A)

There are several great tools that make using kubectl very enjoyable:

• kubectx and kubens are great for fast switching between clusters and namespaces.

I have begun porting kube-ps1 to tmux as a status line plugin. If you prefer tmux, and like the functionality provided by kube-ps1, checkout the kube-tmux project

The default prompt layout is:

(<symbol>|<context>:<namespace>)

If the current-context is not set, kube-ps1 will return the following:

(<symbol>|N/A:N/A)

If you want to stop showing Kubernetes status on your prompt string temporarily run kubeoff. To disable the prompt for all shell sessions, run kubeoff -g. You can enable it again in the current shell by running kubeon, and globally with kubeon -g.

kubeon     : turn on kube-ps1 status for this shell.  Takes precedence over
             global setting for current session
kubeon -g  : turn on kube-ps1 status globally
kubeoff    : turn off kube-ps1 status for this shell. Takes precedence over
             global setting for current session
kubeoff -g : turn off kube-ps1 status globally

The default symbols are UTF8 and should work with most fonts. If you want to use the Kubernetes and OpenShift glyphs, you need to install a patched font that contains the glyph. Nerd Fonts provides both glyphs. Follow their installation instructions to install the patched font.

KUBE_PS1_SYMBOL_CUSTOM options

Options	Symbol	Description
default (empty string)	⎈	Default symbol (Unicode \u2388)
img	☸️	Symbol often used to represent Kubernetes (Unicode \u2638)
oc		Symbol representing OpenShift (Unicode \ue7b7)
k8s		Symbol representing Kubernetes (Unicode \ue7b7)

To set the symbol to one of the custom glyphs, add the following to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

KUBE_PS1_SYMBOL_CUSTOM=img

To set the symbol to the default, set the KUBE_PS1_SYMBOL to an empty string.

Heres a demo of the symbols in action:

If the font is not properly installed, and the glyph is not available, it will display an empty set of brackets or similar:

 echo -n "\ue7b7"
 

The default settings can be overridden in ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc by setting the following variables:

To disable a feature, set it to an empty string:

KUBE_PS1_SEPARATOR=''

The default colors are set with the following variables:

Blue was used for the default symbol to match the Kubernetes color as closely as possible. Red was chosen as the context name to stand out, and cyan for the namespace.

Set the variable to an empty string if you do not want color for each prompt section:

KUBE_PS1_CTX_COLOR=''

Names are usable for the following colors:

black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan

256 colors are available by specifying the numerical value as the variable argument.

You can change how the cluster name and namespace are displayed using the KUBE_PS1_CLUSTER_FUNCTION and KUBE_PS1_NAMESPACE_FUNCTION variables respectively.

For the following examples let's assume the following:

cluster name: sandbox.k8s.example.com namespace: alpha

If you're using domain style cluster names, your prompt will get quite long very quickly. Let's say you only want to display the first portion of the cluster name (sandbox), you could do that by adding the following:

function get_cluster_short() {
  echo "$1" | cut -d . -f1
}

KUBE_PS1_CLUSTER_FUNCTION=get_cluster_short

The same pattern can be followed to customize the display of the namespace. Let's say you would prefer the namespace to be displayed in all uppercase (ALPHA), here's one way you could do that:

function get_namespace_upper() {
    echo "$1" | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'
}

export KUBE_PS1_NAMESPACE_FUNCTION=get_namespace_upper

In both cases, the variable is set to the name of the function, and you must have defined the function in your shell configuration before kube_ps1 is called. The function must accept a single parameter and echo out the final value.

Due to the vast ways of customizing the shell, please try the prompt with a minimal configuration before submitting a bug report.

This can be done as follows for each shell before loading kube-ps1:

Bash:

bash --norc

Zsh:

zsh -f
or
zsh --no-rcs

For the prompt symbol, a patched font that contains the glyphs must be installed. Nerd Fonts Downloads provides patched fonts containing the glyphs. Please consult their documentation for this, support is out of scope for this project.

Thank you to everyone in the community for their contributions to kube-ps1!