vmware-archive/kubeless

★ 6,853GoAudience · ops devopsComplexity · 4/5Setup · hard

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it was
      Serverless on Kubernetes
      Archived by VMware
    Triggers
      HTTP requests
      Pub/sub events
    Runtimes
      Python
      Node.js
      Go
      Ruby
    How it worked
      Custom resources
      Cluster controller
      Auto scaling

mindmap root((repo)) What it was Serverless on Kubernetes Archived by VMware Triggers HTTP requests Pub/sub events Runtimes Python Node.js Go Ruby How it worked Custom resources Cluster controller Auto scaling

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Study Kubernetes custom resource definition patterns using Kubeless as a historical reference implementation.

USE CASE 2

Understand how a serverless controller watches for function definitions and spins up language runtimes on Kubernetes.

USE CASE 3

Reference the pub/sub trigger architecture when designing event-driven systems on Kubernetes.

Tech stack

GoKubernetesPythonNode.jsRubyPHP.NET

Getting it running

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1day+

Project is archived and unmaintained, requires a running Kubernetes cluster and carries significant production risk.

In plain English

Kubeless is an archived project from VMware that was designed to let developers run small pieces of code on a Kubernetes cluster without managing servers or complicated infrastructure setup. VMware has stopped maintaining it, so it no longer receives updates, bug fixes, or support. The repository remains public as a historical reference. The core idea was to let you write a function in a language like Python, Node.js, Go, Ruby, PHP, or .NET, then deploy it to a running Kubernetes cluster with minimal configuration. Once deployed, the function could be triggered by an incoming web request or by a message from a pub/sub system, which is a pattern where one service publishes an event and another service responds to it. Kubeless handled scaling up or down automatically based on demand, so you did not need to think about how many copies of your function were running. Under the hood, Kubeless added its own custom resource type to Kubernetes so that functions could be managed the same way you manage other Kubernetes objects. A controller running inside the cluster watched for new function definitions and spun up the appropriate language runtime to execute them. A web interface was available as a separate project, and there was also a plugin for the Serverless Framework, a popular tool for deploying code to cloud providers. Because the project is no longer maintained, using it in production today carries significant risk. The README suggests that anyone wanting to continue development could fork the repository independently, but no active fork is linked in the current source.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

Explain how Kubeless used Kubernetes custom resource definitions to represent serverless functions, and how I can replicate that pattern with a modern Kubernetes operator.

Prompt 2

Help me migrate a Kubeless Python function that responds to HTTP POST requests to a current Kubernetes-native alternative like Knative or OpenFaaS.

Prompt 3

Write a Kubernetes controller pattern in Go that watches for a custom Function resource and launches the appropriate runtime pod, inspired by the Kubeless architecture.

Prompt 4

Show me how pub/sub event triggering worked in Kubeless and how to implement the same pattern today using Kubernetes event streams.

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