Kompose is a CLI utility that translates docker-compose.yml files into native Kubernetes objects such as Deployments, Services, and PVCs. It eliminates the manual work of rewriitng Compose declarations into YAML manifests.

Installation

# Linux
curl -L https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose/releases/latest/download/kompose-linux-amd64 -o kompose
chmod +x kompose
sudo mv kompose /usr/local/bin/

# macOS
curl -L https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose/releases/latest/download/kompose-darwin-amd64 -o kompose
chmod +x kompose
sudo mv kompose /usr/local/bin/

# Windows (PowerShell)
curl.exe -L https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose/releases/latest/download/kompose-windows-amd64.exe -o kompose.exe

Example Workflow

Compose File

version: "3"
services:
  cache:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    ports:
      - "6379"

  backend:
    image: ghcr.io/example/api:latest
    depends_on:
      - cache
    environment:
      - REDIS_HOST=cache
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    labels:
      kompose.service.type: LoadBalancer

Deploy Immediately

$ kompose up
INFO Creating Kubernetes resources ...
INFO Successfully created Service: cache
INFO Successfully created Service: backend
INFO Successfully created Deployment: cache
INFO Successfully created Deployment: backend

Generate Manifests Only

$ kompose convert
INFO Writing file cache-service.yaml
INFO Writing file backend-service.yaml
INFO Writing file cache-deployment.yaml
INFO Writing file backend-deployment.yaml

The genreated YAML files can be reviewed, edited, and applied with kubectl apply -f.