Kubernetes has an active and collaborative open source community, which has also increased its popularity. There are around 20 community-maintained client libraries that are listed in the Kubernetes documentation, which cover the following languages:
- Clojure
- Go
- Java
- Lisp
- Node.js
- Perl
- PHP
- Python
- Ruby
- Scala
- dotNet
- Elixir
There are some critical points to consider before using a community-maintained client library:
- Aim of the library: It is crucial to consider the aim of the development team and library. Although it seems not directly related to the software itself, it affects how the client library is developed. For instance, some libraries focus on simplicity and compromise on capability coverage. If the vision of your application and the client library don't match, it would be difficult to maintain the application in the long run.
- Version and support: Official libraries support specific Kubernetes API versions and maintain a compatibility matrix. It is critical to work with the client libraries that work with your Kubernetes cluster, and it is also essential to get support for future Kubernetes versions. A community-maintained client library could be very suitable today but depreciate in six months if not supported.
- Community interest: If the considered client library is open source, its community should be alive and interested in making the library better. It is very common to see some libraries start very well but not be maintained due to a missing community. It is not advised to use a client library with old issues without any comments or pull requests that are not reviewed for a very long time.