Kubectl: Provide the ability to clear the current kubectl context without explicitly setting a new one

[zentron]

Feature Request

When attempting to run scripts we sometimes want to create and use a "temporary" context that can be easily cleaned up afterward. (as opposed to appending the --server etc arguments to every command since they may be externally loaded)

e.g

...
$originalContext = $(kubectl config current-context)
kubectl config set-context tempcontext --user=tempuser --cluster=tempcluster
kubectl config use-context tempcontext 
...

do some stuff
...
kubectl config use-context $originalContext
kubectl config delete-context tempcontext 
kubectl config delete-cluster tempcluster
...etc

However the delete-context result may end up with warning: this removed your active context, use "kubectl config use-context" to select a different one if there was no original context set (lets say on a fresh machine). Although the context can start as "" in the config, there is no way to just set it to "" since kubectl config use-context with no context _name_ results in an error due to "unexpected args"

It would be nice if we could either

1. Use the use-context command and provide a null or empty context (or some --clear arg)
2. Or provide a kubectl config clear-context

[fejta-bot]

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[zentron]

/remove-lifecycle stale

[jeremyjh]

@zentron do you have a workaround for this? When I'm not actively working with Kubernetes I'd like to clear my context so it doesn't take up room in my prompt.

[zentron]

@jeremyjh for my purposes I ended up just setting the KUBECONFIG environment variable (https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/access-application-cluster/configure-access-multiple-clusters/#set-the-kubeconfig-environment-variable) so that i could create a temporary context and then delete it for clean up once my operation is complete. Given this work-around I'm happy to consider this task as closed for my purposes.

[seans3]

/kind feature
/sig cli
/area kubectl
/priority P3

[fejta-bot]

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[Bessonov]

/remove-lifecycle stale

[grugnog]

Another use case for this - if you use a combination of minikube (or other "dev" clusters) and production clusters I find it helpful to set the context at the beginning of a session and explicitly clear it afterwards. This helps avoid accidentally running commands against the wrong cluster.

I have the current context on my prompt using the fantastic Go Bullet Train (GBT) to remind me to what the context is (and to clear it afterwards!).

Currently I have the following alias to do this:
alias kubeclr='sed -i"" -e"s/^current-context:.*$/current-context:/" ~/.kube/config'

[fejta-bot]

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[tdmalone]

/remove-lifecycle stale

[madAndroid]

It looks like this might already have been implemented? I was looking for a way of doing this, and was able to achieve this using:

$ kubectl config unset current-context
Property "current-context" unset.

[fejta-bot]

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[seans3]

/remove-lifecycle stale

[tdmalone]

@madAndroid is correct - this has already been implemented, and thus this ticket should be allowed to close.

Is possible like this:

$ kubectl config unset current-context
Property "current-context" unset.

and therefore @grugnog's workaround is no longer needed.

[seans3]

@tdmalone Thanks for the explanation. Closing.

/close

[k8s-ci-robot]

@seans3: Closing this issue.

In response to this:

@tdmalone Thanks for the explanation. Closing.

/close

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