Mac Kubernetes Local Development (Podman - Minikube - kubctl) in 60 seconds

Setup our local dev env

In this Quickstart, you will set up Kubernetes local development on a Mac M1 using Podman and Minikube.

Follow the steps below to get your environment up and running in just a minute.

This guide will walk you through the installation and configuration process, ensuring you have a functional kubernetes cluster on your local machine.

Assumptions:

• You are using homebrew -> https://brew.sh/
• Command line developer tools is installed -> https://developer.apple.com/xcode/

If developer tools are not installed, go ahead, open your terminal and run:

xcode-select --install

Make commands

make setup

Installs software packages via brew install. Starts Podman VM and minikube. See Brewfile. This will setup a VM called vm1 with 2 CPUs, 2Gb Memory and 20GB of storage.

make destroy

Deletes a local Kubernetes cluster. This command deletes the VM, and removes all associated files.

make uninstall

Remove software packages installed via make setup. See Brewfile.

You are done!

Next Steps

Bootstrap fluxcd

Prerequisites:

1. A new GitHub repository, e.g. flux-minikube NOTE: This repo has contents already

2. PAT (personal access token)

3. Run the boostrap command:

flux bootstrap github --owner=diablinux --repository=flux-minikube --private=false --personal=true  --token-auth --verbose 

Please enter your GitHub personal access token (PAT):
► connecting to github.com
✔ repository "https://github.com/diablinux/flux-minikube" created
► cloning branch "main" from Git repository "https://github.com/diablinux/flux-minikube.git"
✔ cloned repository
► generating component manifests
✔ generated component manifests
✔ committed component manifests to "main" ("2bf8066cd8c6f5711283109ad804ff6864a2acac")
► pushing component manifests to "https://github.com/diablinux/flux-minikube.git"
► installing components in "flux-system" namespace
✔ installed components
✔ reconciled components
► determining if source secret "flux-system/flux-system" exists
► generating source secret
► applying source secret "flux-system/flux-system"
✔ reconciled source secret
► generating sync manifests
✔ generated sync manifests
✔ committed sync manifests to "main" ("0454dcdcd63676229162e570194ae3ebdfe35409")
► pushing sync manifests to "https://github.com/diablinux/flux-minikube.git"
► applying sync manifests
✔ reconciled sync configuration
◎ waiting for GitRepository "flux-system/flux-system" to be reconciled
✔ GitRepository reconciled successfully
◎ waiting for Kustomization "flux-system/flux-system" to be reconciled
✔ Kustomization reconciled successfully
► confirming components are healthy
✔ helm-controller: deployment ready
✔ kustomize-controller: deployment ready
✔ notification-controller: deployment ready
✔ source-controller: deployment ready
✔ all components are healthy

4. Clone the repo locally:

gh repo clone diablinux/flux-minikube

5. Pull the repo contents

cd flux-minikube
git pull

The folder structure should look like:

├── flux-system
│   ├── gotk-components.yaml
│   ├── gotk-sync.yaml
│   └── kustomization.yaml

NOTE: Since we are creating this repo for testing purposes, and since we did not specify any path during flux bootstrap (see --path parameter for more details), flux will observe any files from the root of the repo.

Keep this in mind depending your folder structure strategy.

You can bootstrap existing git repositories, or add different repositories, e.g. a repo for the infrastructure, a repo for the cloud resources, a repo for the configurations, an so forth.

FluxCD v2

Here is a list of the default controllers provisioned by Flux (as of Flux v2.x) when installed using flux install or flux bootstrap:

---

Core Controllers (Installed by Default)

• source-controller

  • Manages artifact acquisition from sources like:
    • Git repositories (GitRepository).
    • Helm repositories (HelmRepository).
    • OCI artifacts (container registries).
    • Buckets (S3, GCS, Azure Blob).

• kustomize-controller

  • Applies Kustomize manifests to the cluster.
  • Watches Kustomization resources and reconciles them against the desired state in Git.
  • Handles dependency ordering (e.g., dependsOn).

• helm-controller

  • Manages Helm releases declaratively.
  • Watches HelmRelease resources and installs/upgrades charts.
  • Integrates with HelmRepository and OCI sources.

• notification-controller

  • Handles alerts and notifications for Flux events.
  • Watches Alert and Provider resources (e.g., Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord).
  • Sends notifications for reconciliation failures/successes.

---

Optional Controllers (Not Installed by Default)

• image-reflector-controller

  • Scans container registries to reflect image metadata (tags, digests).
  • Used with ImageRepository and ImagePolicy resources.

• image-automation-controller

  • Automatically updates workloads when new images are detected.
  • Pushes changes back to Git (e.g., updates deployment.yaml with new image tags).

---

Key Notes

• Flux’s default installation (flux install) includes only the core controllers (source, kustomize, helm, notification).
• To enable image automation, you must explicitly install the optional controllers:

  flux install --components=source-controller,kustomize-controller,helm-controller,notification-controller,image-reflector-controller,image-automation-controller  

• All controllers run in the flux-system namespace by default.

Final note: You will find my approach on managing cluster addons, apps and cloud resources in the flux-minikube repository.