// the find
alexellis/arkade
Open Source Marketplace For Developer Tools
arkade is a CLI tool installer and Kubernetes app manager — think Homebrew, but cross-platform and focused on the DevOps/cloud-native toolchain. It handles binary detection for OS/arch, downloads to a local cache, and wraps helm installs with typed flags instead of raw values.yaml. Primarily useful for Kubernetes practitioners who set up new machines or CI runners regularly.
The OS/arch auto-detection with override flags is genuinely well-done — one command works on x86 Mac, ARM Linux, and Windows without looking up the download page. The helm wrapper with typed flags (`--gateways 2` instead of `--set gateway.replicas=2`) reduces the cognitive load of installing common charts. The `arkade get` pattern in CI is practical: pin a tool version in one line without a custom install script. The chart upgrade/verify commands for image tag management are a real gap in the helm ecosystem that this fills.
The catalog is maintained by hand in tools.go, which means tools fall out of date and versions lag GitHub releases until someone sends a PR — you should verify what version you actually got. The Kubernetes app catalog (53 apps) skews heavily toward the OpenFaaS ecosystem, which makes sense given the author, but anyone not in that orbit will find big gaps. The system packages list is thin and Linux-only, so the 'install anything' promise doesn't hold on Windows or Mac for that subcommand. Requiring Git Bash on Windows is a rough edge that will bite anyone trying to use it in a non-Git-Bash CI environment.