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argoproj-labs / argocd-image-updater

Automatic container image update for Argo CD
https://argocd-image-updater.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
Apache License 2.0
1.28k stars 263 forks source link

Overall Project Status Update - Did Kargo replace this? #645

Open TechDawg270 opened 12 months ago

TechDawg270 commented 12 months ago

With the introduction of Kargo, and what seems to be a lack of overall responsiveness here, what are the short and long term plans for this project? Will it be maintained and new features added while bugs are addressed? Any information would be helpful for those using, or considering to use, this software

jannfis commented 11 months ago

Hi. I can totally understand your concerns and your question is more than fair. Unfortunately, the free time available to me to maintain this project has been steadily decreasing. A demanding day time job and a family life leave little to no room for me to invest heavily in the maintenance right now.

However, I think the use case this project satisfies has become far too popular to be left dying. If someone wants to step up and co-maintain Image Updater, I'd be more than happy. We also have plans to make it a first-class citizen of Argo CD at some point, maybe that'll attract more people wanting to step up. But I'm not sure when that is going to happen.

I understand that the current situation is frustrating, and also kind of in a deadlock. I do not have enough time to review complex PRs, and potential sustainable contributors are frustrated that their work goes unattended and won't contribute more.

As for the question whether Kargo replaces this: I'm not sure. You have to ask them :)

jessesuen commented 11 months ago

Kargo does not replace image-updater and it was not an intention to kill this project. I consider image-updater a unix-like spot-solution. On the other hand, Kargo's scope is much larger, where image updating is just the start of a deployment pipeline, that may not even involve Argo CD. So if the only thing you were to use Kargo for was to writeback images to git for a single environment, then you would be better off sticking with image updater.

Up until https://github.com/akuity/kargo/pull/1058, Kargo was, in fact, using image-updater under the covers. But we had to move off of it because of the deep tie-in that it had brought with Argo CD, gitops-engine, and indirectly lower kubernetes version. Upon investigation, could not easily/readily be removed (believe me, we tried). And so Kargo had to lift, refactor, and strip image updater to the parts we needed.

I consider Kargo and Argo CD sister/cousin projects, and understand that there are already large numbers of user who are using image-updater, and may prefer it over running Kargo. Heck, we even offer image-updater in our platform. For simpler use cases (e.g. single environments with no need for a promotion pipeline), image-updater may be right for many.

We had an offline discussion about how following https://github.com/akuity/kargo/pull/1058, image-updater could benefit from the fixes/improvements that were made as part of the lift and shift. @alexmt is going to work on a proposal where the common bits might be extracted to a shared library. Basically, a notifications-engine / gitops-engine approach where the base layer can benefit any project built ontop of it. Please stay tuned for that. That said, it would require commitment from image-updater to use it, otherwise it could be a wasted effort. Kargo can't really afford to wait for something like that to happen, but in the meantime will keep the common bits maintained in a fashion that it can be extracted/reused amongst both projects.

asychev commented 8 months ago

So, March 2024 - what is the status of the project, could we please make it fully clear and transparent?

kizzie commented 7 months ago

I'd also love an answer to this one, as the argo-image-updater latest image has a bunch of critical security vulnerabilities that I need to do something about!

jannfis commented 6 months ago

Hi folks,

Apologies please that it took a while for me to answer. Good news is that there have been people reaching out to help. I'm happy to announce that @chengfang and @pasha-codefresh, both of whom I know and fully trust, will help in driving this project forward.

Highest priorities for now is to push out a new release and comb through open issues and especially open PRs.

We do have some plans to go forward with argocd-image-updater, so stay tuned.

Sorry again for the overall delay in both, communications and driving this project forward.