Crossplane and Upbound emerged out of the Kubernetes ecosystem. The up CLI’s command structure and syntax is strongly inspired by Kubernetes contexts and the conventions of the Kubernetes kubectl CLI.

Contexts in Upbound

Upbound’s information architecture is a hierarchy consisting of:

• a set of control planes
• logically grouped into control planes groups
• which are hosted in an environment called a Space.

These contexts nest within each other. A control plane must always belong to a group which must be hosted in a Space–whether Cloud, Connected, or Disconnected.

Every control plane in Upbound has its own API server. Each Space likewise offers a set of APIs that you can manage things through, exposed as a Kubernetes-compatible API. This means there’s two relevant contextual scopes you interact with often: a Spaces context and a control plane context.

In up, the commands you can execute are context-sensitive.

The ‘up ctx’ command

In up, the up ctx sub-command is a single command to set a kubecontext across all deployments of Upbound. You can use this kubecontext to drive interactions via kubectl. up CLI commands that interact with Upbound’s Kubernetes compatible APIs also use the current kubeconfig context.

Interactive terminal UI

The default experience for up ctx is a terminal UI like kubectx.

The following are some tips for using the terminal UI:

• Use the arrow keys or hotkeys to navigate around the hierarchy within Upbound. Pressing the right arrow button attempts to navigate you into a context. Pressing the left arrow button attempts to navigate you out of the current context into the parent context.
• Use the Q key to quit and set the context you’re in as the current kubecontext.
• Use the escape key to quit and cancel changing your kubecontext.

Non-interactive navigation

You can also use up ctx in a non-interactive mode to navigate around the information hierarchy in Upbound. This form of navigation works in similar fashion to navigating a file system from a CLI.

Suppose you start with your context pointed at a Space:

up ctx .
# returns acme/upbound-gcp-us-west1

To traverse to a group, you can use a relative path:

up ctx ./my-group
# returns acme/upbound-gcp-us-west1/my-group

To return to the previous level in the hierarchy, you can use ..:

up ctx ..
# returns acme/upbound-gcp-us-west1

If you’re connecting to multiple control planes and want to hop between them, you can do the following:

up ctx acme/upbound-gcp-us-west1/my-group/ctp1
# Set context to ctp1

up ctx acme/upbound-gcp-us-west1/other-group/ctp2
# Set context to ctp2

up ctx -
# Resets context to previous context, ctp1

up ctx -
# Resets context to previous context, ctp2

Storing a context to a file

Instead of selecting a context and making it your current kubecontext, you can also print the context out to a kubeconfig file. Run the following:

# This saves a control plane's connection details to a kubeconfig
up ctx <your-org>/<your-space>/<your-group>/<your-ctp> -f - > context.yaml

# This saves a Space's connection details to a kubeconfig
up ctx <your-org>/<your-space> -f - > context.yaml

# This saves whatever the current context is to a kubeconfig
up ctx . -f - > context.yaml

Print the current context

If you get lost in the navigation hierarchy, you can print the current context to the screen with the following command:

up ctx .

Generate a kubeconfig

Because contexts in Upbound are Kubernetes-compatible, there may be cases where you want to generate a kubeconfig from a context:

• Use the kubeconfig with a CLI like kubectl
• Provide the kubeconfig to tooling such as Argo

Generate a kubeconfig for a Space

The steps below generate a kubeconfig so you can interact with Space APIs.

1. Log on to Upbound.

   up login
   

2. Set your up context to the desired Space. For example, this command sets it to an Upbound Cloud Space:

   up ctx /upbound-gcp-us-central-1
   

3. Save the current context to a kubeconfig in your current working directory called context.yaml:

   up ctx . -f - > context.yaml
   

Generate a kubeconfig for a Space with a group set

The steps below generate a kubeconfig with the namespace set to the group so you can interact with Space APIs.

1. Log on to Upbound.

   up login
   

2. Set your up context to the desired control plane group in your Upbound resource hierarchy. For example, this command sets it to the default group of an Upbound Cloud Space:

   up ctx /upbound-gcp-us-central-1/default
   

3. Save the current context to a kubeconfig in your current working directory called context.yaml:

   up ctx . -f - > context.yaml
   

Generate a kubeconfig for a control plane in a group

The steps below generate a kubeconfig so you can interact with a control plane’s API server.

1. Log on to Upbound.

   up login
   

2. Set your up context to the desired control plane in your Upbound resource hierarchy. For example, this command sets it to a control plane in the default group of an Upbound Cloud Space:

   up ctx /upbound-gcp-us-central-1/default/my-ctp
   

3. Save the current context to a kubeconfig in your current working directory called context.yaml:

   up ctx . -f - > context.yaml