Installation

The kswitch installation consists of a kubectl-switch binary and a shell function that must be sourced into your shell.

NOTE: Always invoke kswitch via the shell function (kswitch), not the binary directly (kubectl-switch). The shell function is required to export KUBECONFIG into your current shell session.

Option 1 - Homebrew (macOS)

brew tap MichaelSp/kswitch
brew trust --cask michaelsp/kswitch/kubectl-switch
brew install kubectl-switch

Next, follow required: source the shell function.

Option 2 - Github releases

Download the kubectl-switch binary:

curl -L -o /usr/local/bin/kubectl-switch "https://github.com/MichaelSp/kswitch/releases/latest/download/kubectl-switch_$(uname -s | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')_$(uname -m | sed 's/x86_64/amd64/;s/aarch64/arm64/')"
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/kubectl-switch

If you are using Windows, go to the release page and download the Windows binary: https://github.com/MichaelSp/kswitch/releases/
Copy it to a folder in your PATH. To add a folder to the path for the current PowerShell session: $env:Path += ';C:\myfolder'

Next, follow required: source the shell function.

Option 3 - From source

go get github.com/MichaelSp/kswitch

From the repository root run make build-kswitch. This builds the binaries to /hack/switch/. Copy the binary for your OS/architecture to e.g. /usr/local/bin/kubectl-switch.

Next, follow required: source the shell function.

Required: Source the shell function

The kubectl-switch init command generates both the kswitch shell function and the tab-completion script. Source its output in your shell rc file so the kswitch command is available in every new shell.

Bash

echo 'source <(kubectl-switch init bash)' >> ~/.bashrc

# optionally use alias `s` instead of `kswitch`
echo 'alias s=kswitch' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'complete -o default -F __start_kswitch s' >> ~/.bashrc

Zsh

echo 'source <(kubectl-switch init zsh)' >> ~/.zshrc

# optionally use alias `s` instead of `kswitch`
echo 'alias s=kswitch' >> ~/.zshrc

Fish

echo 'kubectl-switch init fish | source' >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish

# optionally use alias `s` instead of `kswitch`
echo 'function s --wraps kswitch; kswitch $argv; end' >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish

PowerShell

kubectl-switch.exe init powershell >> $PROFILE

# add this for autocomplete to work
echo 'Register-ArgumentCompleter -CommandName ''kswitch'' -ScriptBlock $__kswitchCompleterBlock' >> $PROFILE

# optionally use alias `s` instead of `kswitch`
echo "Set-Alias -Name s -Value kswitch" >> $PROFILE
echo 'Register-ArgumentCompleter -CommandName ''s'' -ScriptBlock $__kswitchCompleterBlock' >> $PROFILE

# re-source your profile
. $PROFILE

Check that it works

Run kswitch (or s if you set the alias) from any terminal. If the command is not found, open a new terminal or re-source your rc file (.zshrc, .bashrc, …).

That should display the contexts the tool can find with the default configuration. If you get Error: you need to point kswitch to a kubeconfig file or do not see all desired contexts, follow kubeconfig stores for configuration.