The next time you're told to RTFM, don't worry, we've made the M a lot better.
I've been the Crossplane docs maintainer for a little over a year now. I started my Crossplane journey the same way most users do: some knowledge of Kubernetes and no knowledge of how Crossplane works or what it does.
As the framework for building cloud native control planes, Crossplane extends the Kubernetes API experience and helps to provision, manage and orchestrate anything–setting the building blocks for creating customized platforms.
I've let my experience guide my work on the Crossplane docs, originally starting with the set of quick start guides and now moving to discuss the Crossplane core concepts in depth.
It's taken nearly two months, with more than 200 PR comments and nearly 6,000 new lines of content across nine pages but we can finally announce our expanded Concepts docs.
The new docs include:
- The Crossplane pods covering the Crossplane and Crossplane-RBAC pods, their functions and how to change pod settings.
- Crossplane Providers describing installing, upgrading and configuring Providers. Now we finally have documentation on Provider conditions!
- Details on managed resource references, management policies, and conditions.
- A streamlined Compositions page focused entirely on the Crossplane Composition kind. This includes patches, connection details and custom readiness checks.
- A guide for Composite Resource Definitions.
- Information on how Crossplane works with composite resources and Claims.
- A dedicated resource for Composition Patch and Transforms.
- Our first documentation on EnvironmentConfigs, first released in Crossplane v1.11.
- A detailed explanation of managing connection details in Crossplane.
I'm particularly proud of the work we did covering patch and transforms. The docs now include complete Compositions, XRDs and Claims to make recreating the docs and testing patches locally much easier.
Our new guide on managing connection details fills in some gaps our docs had on how Compositions and XRDs handle connection details generated by resources as well as new documentation covering the value and fromFieldPath options for connection secrets.
It's not all just about content though. By breaking up our old docs monolith, Composite Resources, we expect users will have an easier time finding what they want and will dramatically improve search results.
But the work doesn't stop. We have a lot more on the docs roadmap, including incorporating Crossplane APIs, guides on migrating from Terraform to Crossplane, more details on using Provider authentication methods and Crossplane troubleshooting labs.
We're always looking for help, if you're interested in rolling up your sleeves and contributing to the Crossplane docs take a look at our contributing guide and ask for help in #documentation in the Crossplane Slack.
Crossplane is a community-driven project and we welcome you to join the community and contribute through a variety of opportunities, such as opening and commenting on issues, joining the community meetings, sharing your adoption story, and providing feedback on design docs and pull requests.
We love to hear from the community, as they are exactly what makes this project great.
Whether you are a developer, user, or just interested in what we're up to, feel free to join us via one of the following methods:
Also, if you’re just getting started or an experience Crossplane user, we invite you to join us live on September 19 for an online community event, Control Plane Day with Crossplane, presented by Upbound. Register early here.