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Installing a Command Line Interface (CLI) Tools

(Required) kubectl

You can use kubectl to apply the YAML files required to install Knative components, and also to create Knative resources, such as Knative Services and event sources using YAML.

Installing the kubectl CLI

If you are on macOS and using Homebrew package manager, you can install kubectl with Homebrew. 

brew install kubectl

See Install and Set Up kubectl.

kn provides a quick and easy interface for creating Knative resources such as Knative Services and event sources, without the need to create or modify YAML files directly. kn also simplifies completion of otherwise complex procedures such as autoscaling and traffic splitting.

Installing the kn CLI

For macOS, you can install kn by using Homebrew.

brew install knative/client/kn

You can install kn by downloading the executable binary for your system and placing it in the system path.

A link to the latest stable binary release is available on the kn release page.

  1. Check out the kn client repository:

    git clone https://github.com/knative/client.git
cd client/

  2. Build an executable binary:

    hack/build.sh -f

  3. Move kn into your system path, and verify that kn commands are working properly. For example:

    kn version

WARNING: Nightly container images include features which may not be included in the latest Knative release and are not considered to be stable.

Links to images are available here:

You can run kn from a container image. For example:

docker run --rm -v "$HOME/.kube/config:/root/.kube/config" gcr.io/knative-releases/knative.dev/client/cmd/kn:latest service list

NOTE: Running kn from a container image does not place the binary on a permanent path. This procedure must be repeated each time you want to use kn.

Tip

For more complex installations, such as nightly releases, see Install kn