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name content description Fairwinds Polaris | Documentation | Polaris can be used on the command line to audit local Kubernetes manifests stored in YAML files.

Infrastructure as Code

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Polaris can be used on the command line to audit local Kubernetes manifests stored in YAML files. This is particularly helpful for running Polaris against your infrastructure-as-code as part of a CI/CD pipeline. Use the available command line flags to cause CI/CD to fail if your Polaris score drops below a certain threshold, or if any danger-level issues arise.

Install the CLI

To run Polaris against your YAML manifests, e.g. as part of a Continuous Integration process, you'll need to install the CLI.

Binary releases can be downloaded from the releases page or can be installed with Homebrew:

brew tap FairwindsOps/tap
brew install FairwindsOps/tap/polaris
polaris version

Checking Infrastructure as Code files

You can audit Kubernetes YAML files by running:

polaris audit --audit-path ./deploy/ --format=pretty

This will print out any issues Polaris finds in your manifests.

Polaris can only check raw YAML manifests. If you'd like to check a Helm template, you can run helm template to generate a manifest that Polaris can check.

Fixing Issues

Polaris can automatically fix many of the issues it finds. For example, you can run

polaris fix --files-path ./deploy/ --checks=all

to fix any issues inside the deploy directory. Polaris may leave comments next to some changes (e.g. liveness and readiness probes) prompting the user to set them to something more appropriate given the context of their application.

Note that not all issues can be automatically fixed.

Currently only raw YAML manifests can be mutated. Helm charts etc. still need to be changed manually.

Running in a CI pipeline

Set minimum score for an exit code

You can tell the CLI to set an exit code if it detects certain issues with your YAML files. For example, to fail if polaris detects any danger-level issues, or if the score drops below 90%:

polaris audit --audit-path ./deploy/ \
  --set-exit-code-on-danger \
  --set-exit-code-below-score 90

Pretty-print results

By default, results are output as JSON. You can get human-readable output with the --format=pretty flag:

polaris audit --audit-path ./deploy/ \
  --format=pretty

You can also disable colors and emoji:

polaris audit --audit-path ./deploy/ \
  --format=pretty \
  --color=false

Output only showing failed tests

The CLI to gives you ability to display results containing only failed tests. For example:

polaris audit --audit-path ./deploy/ \
  --only-show-failed-tests true

Audit Helm Charts

You can audit helm charts using the --helm-chart and --helm-values flags:

polaris audit \
  --helm-chart ./deploy/chart \
  --helm-values ./deploy/chart/values.yml

As Github Action

Setup polaris action

This action downloads a version of polaris and adds it to the path. It makes the polaris cli ready to use in following steps of the same job.

Inputs

version

The release version to fetch. This has to be in the form <tag_name>.

Outputs

version

The version number of the release tag.

Example usage

uses: fairwindsops/polaris/.github/actions/setup-polaris@master
with:
  version: 5.0.0

Example inside a job:

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v2
  - name: Setup polaris
    uses: fairwindsops/polaris/.github/actions/setup-polaris@master
    with:
      version: 5.0.0

  - name: Use command
    run: polaris version