AutoUpdate (autoupdate/v1-alpha)

Keeping your Kubebuilder project up to date with the latest improvements shouldn’t be a chore. With a small amount of setup, you can receive automatic Pull Request suggestions whenever a new Kubebuilder release is available — keeping your project maintained, secure, and aligned with ecosystem changes.

This automation uses the kubebuilder alpha update command with a 3-way merge strategy to refresh your project scaffold, and wraps it in a GitHub Actions workflow that opens an Issue with a Pull Request compare link so you can create the PR and review it.

When to Use It

  • When you don’t deviate too much from the default scaffold — ensure that you see the note about customization here.
  • When you want to reduce the burden of keeping the project updated and well-maintained.
  • When you want to guidance and help from AI to know what changes are needed to keep your project up to date as to solve conflicts.

How to Use It

  • If you want to add the autoupdate plugin to your project:
kubebuilder edit --plugins="autoupdate.kubebuilder.io/v1-alpha"
  • If you want to create a new project with the autoupdate plugin:
kubebuilder init --plugins=go/v4,autoupdate/v1-alpha

How It Works

This will scaffold a GitHub Actions workflow that runs the kubebuilder alpha update command. Whenever a new Kubebuilder release is available, the workflow will automatically open an Issue with a Pull Request compare link so you can easily create the PR and review it, such as:

Example Issue

By default, the workflow scaffolded uses --use-gh-model the flag to leverage in AI models to help you understand what changes are needed. You’ll get a concise list of changed files to streamline the review, for example:

Screenshot 2025-08-26 at 13 40 53

If conflicts arise, AI-generated comments call them out and provide next steps, such as:

Conflicts

Workflow details

The workflow will check once a week for new releases, and if there are any, it will create an Issue with a Pull Request compare link so you can create the PR and review it. The command called by the workflow is:

	# More info: https://kubebuilder.io/reference/commands/alpha_update
    - name: Run kubebuilder alpha update
      run: |
		# Executes the update command with specified flags.
		# --force: Completes the merge even if conflicts occur, leaving conflict markers.
		# --push: Automatically pushes the resulting output branch to the 'origin' remote.
		# --restore-path: Preserves specified paths (e.g., CI workflow files) when squashing.
		# --open-gh-models: Adds an AI-generated comment to the created Issue with
		#   a short overview of the scaffold changes and conflict-resolution guidance (If Any).
        kubebuilder alpha update \
          --force \
          --push \
          --restore-path .github/workflows \
          --open-gh-issue \
          --use-gh-models