Validating kubernetes manifest with --dry-run and generateName

[guilherme]

We're using ArgoCD to manage deployments, and I'm in the process of sorting out the config repository. I'm planning on having pull requests for any change to the config, and I want to validate the configuration to ensure it's not breaking anything. I've done some looking around, and it looks like the main options are kubeval, kubeconform or using --dry-run with kubectl.

Due to kubectl actually connecting to the cluster, and have the cluster perform the validation I prefer this approach as it should catch every possible error, however I'm running into a problem.

One of the resources uses generateName which is not compatible with kubectl apply, so if I try and validate using kubectl apply -f manifest.yaml --dry-run=server I get the error cannot use generate name with apply. To get around this, I tried to use kubectl create -f manifest.yaml --dry-run=server but instead I get a load of errors about resources already existing (understandable).

So how can I do this? I can't use apply, and I can't use create. Are there any other options? Does anyone know what Argo uses to validate, because if I push something invalid it presents an error before it is told to sync.

[jeanid]

After a lot of playing around, I came to a working solution that I briefly mentioned in a comment in the original question. The CI is now creating a namespace on the cluster, running the dry run apply and then deleting the namespace when finished. Not sure if this is the perfect solution but it's working as I hoped.

helm template . \
  --values common/values-common.yaml \
  --values variants/$VARIANT/values-$VARIANT.yaml \
  --name-template=github-actions-test \
  --set image.tag=github-actions-test \
  --namespace $NAMESPACE \
  --debug > dry-run.yaml
kubectl create namespace $NAMESPACE --dry-run=client -o yaml | kubectl apply -f -

echo "errors=$(kubectl create -f dry-run.yaml -n $NAMESPACE --dry-run=server -o yaml 2>&1 > /dev/null)" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT

kubectl delete namespace $NAMESPACE