Inventory object (PREMIUM)

Introduced in GitLab 14.0.

An inventory object is a ConfigMap object for keeping track of the set of objects applied to a cluster. When you remove objects from a manifest repository, the Agent uses a corresponding inventory object to prune (delete) objects from the cluster.

The Agent creates an inventory object for each manifest project specified in the gitops.manifest_projects configuration section. The inventory object has to be stored somewhere in the cluster. The default behavior is:

• The namespace used comes from gitops.manifest_projects[].default_namespace. If you don't specify this parameter explicitly, the inventory object is stored in the default namespace.

• The name is generated from the numeric project ID of the manifest project and the numeric agent ID.

  This way the Agent constructs the name and local where the inventory object is stored in the cluster.

The Agent cannot locate the existing inventory object if you:

• Change gitops.manifest_projects[].default_namespace parameter.
• Move manifests into another project.

Inventory object template

The inventory object template is a ConfigMap object that allows you to configure the namespace and the name of the inventory object. Store this template with manifest files in a single group.

Example inventory object template:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: unique-name-for-the-inventory
  namespace: my-project-namespace
  labels:
    cli-utils.sigs.k8s.io/inventory-id: unique-name-for-the-inventory

• The namespace and name fields configure where the real inventory object is created.
• The cli-utils.sigs.k8s.io/inventory-id label with its corresponding value is set on the inventory object, created from this template. Make sure that the value is unique (for example, a string of random characters) and doesn't clash with any existing or future inventory object templates.
• Objects tracked by this inventory object have the config.k8s.io/owning-inventory annotation set to the value of the cli-utils.sigs.k8s.io/inventory-id label.
• The label's value doesn't have to match the name but it's convenient to have them set to the same value.
• Make sure that the name is unique so that it doesn't conflict with another inventory object in the same namespace in the future.

Using GitOps with pre-existing Kubernetes objects

The Agent treats manifest files in the manifest repository as the source of truth. When it applies objects from the files to the cluster, it tracks them in an inventory object. If an object already exists, The Agent behaves differently based on the gitops.manifest_projects[].inventory_policy configuration. Check the table below with the available options and when to use them.