kn plugins

The kn CLI supports the use of plugins. Plugins enable you to extend the functionality of your kn installation by adding custom commands and other shared commands that are not part of the core distribution of kn.

Warning

The plugins must be named with the prefix kn- to be detected by kn. For example, kn-func will be detected but func won’t be detected.

kn source plugins

An event source plugin has the following characteristics:

  • It has a name that is part of the kn source group.
  • It provides CRUD sub-commands; create, update, delete, describe, and sometimes apply.
  • It requires a mandatory --sink flag to be passed when using the create command.

List of Knative plugins

You can view all available kn plugins in the Knative Extensions repository.

PluginDescriptionAvailable via Homebrew?
kn-plugin-adminkn plugin for managing a Kubernetes based Knative installationY
kn-plugin-diagkn plugin for diagnosing issues by exposing detailed information for different layers of Knative objectsN
kn-plugin-eventkn plugin for sending events to Knative sinksY
kn-plugin-funckn plugin for functionsY
kn-plugin-migrationkn plugin for migrating Knative Services from one cluster to anotherN
kn-plugin-operatorkn plugin for managing Knative with Knative OperatorN
kn-plugin-quickstartkn plugin for developers to install a quickstart Knative cluster for experimentation purposesY
kn-plugin-service-logkn plugin for showing the standard output of Knative ServicesN
kn-plugin-source-kafkakn plugin for managing Kafka event sourcesY
kn-plugin-source-kameletkn plugin for managing Kamelets and KameletBindingsY

Manually install a plugin

You can manually install all plugins. To manually install a plugin:

  1. Download the current release of the plugin from GitHub. See the list of Knative plugins you can download.
  2. Rename the file to remove the OS and architecture information. For example, rename kn-admin-darwin-amd64 to kn-admin.
  3. Make the plugin executable. For example, chmod +x kn-admin.
  4. Move the file to a directory on your PATH. For example, /usr/local/bin.

Install a plugin by using Homebrew

You can install some plugins can be installed using the Knative plugins Homebrew Tap. For example, you can install the kn-admin plugin by running brew install knative-extensions/kn-plugins/admin.

List available plugins

You can list all available (installed) plugins by entering the command:

  1. kn plugin list