DEMO Kustomize Controller Plain YAML Manifests in Different Repo

In this lesson, you’ll configure FluxCD to pull plain YAML manifests from a different Git repository and apply them with Kustomize Controller. We’ll create a GitRepository source and a Kustomization resource step by step.

Prerequisites

• A Kubernetes cluster with FluxCD v0.38+ installed
• flux CLI configured with your cluster’s kubeconfig
• Access to the bb-app-source repository on GitHub

1. Checkout the 2-demo Branch

Switch to the 2-demo branch in your bb-app-source repository:

cd bb-app-source
git checkout 2-demo

You should see:

Branch '2-demo' set up to track remote branch '2-demo' from 'origin'.
Switched to a new branch '2-demo'

2. Review the Application Manifest

Inspect the Deployment manifest under manifests/. Notice the image version has been updated to 7.2.0:

# bb-app-source/manifests/deployment.yaml
env: dev
version: 7.2.0
spec:
  containers:
    - name: app
      image: siddharth67/block-buster-dev:7.2.0
      imagePullPolicy: Always
      resources:
        requests:
          memory: "10Mi"
          cpu: "10m"
        limits:
          memory: "64Mi"
          cpu: "20m"

3. Create the GitRepository Source

From your Flux cluster configuration directory (block-buster/flux-clusters/dev-cluster), run:

cd ../block-buster/flux-clusters/dev-cluster
flux create source git bb-app-2demo \
  --url https://github.com/sidd-harth-2/bb-app-source \
  --branch 2-demo \
  --timeout 10s \
  --export > bb-app-2demo-source.yaml

This generates:

# bb-app-2demo-source.yaml
apiVersion: source.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta2
kind: GitRepository
metadata:
  name: bb-app-2demo
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  interval: 1m0s
  url: https://github.com/sidd-harth-2/bb-app-source
  ref:
    branch: 2-demo

Commit and push this file so Flux can fetch your manifests automatically.

4. Create the Kustomization Resource

Use the Flux CLI to define a Kustomization that points to the manifests folder in your bb-app-source repo:

flux create kustomization bb-app-2demo-kustomize \
  --source GitRepository/bb-app-2demo \
  --path ./manifests \
  --prune=true \
  --interval=10s \
  --target-namespace 2-demo \
  --export > bb-app-2demo-kustomize.yaml

# bb-app-2demo-kustomize.yaml
apiVersion: kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta2
kind: Kustomization
metadata:
  name: bb-app-2demo-kustomize
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  interval: 10s
  path: ./manifests
  prune: true
  sourceRef:
    kind: GitRepository
    name: bb-app-2demo
  targetNamespace: 2-demo

Commit and push the Kustomization YAML so Flux can reconcile it.

5. Overview of Created Resources

6. Verify Flux Reconciliation

First, check your Git sources:

flux get sources git

Expected output:

NAME         REVISION                READY   MESSAGE
bb-app-2demo 2-demo@sha1:7dfa8105     True    stored artifact for revision '2-demo@sha1:7dfa8105'
flux-system  main@sha1:cf1664a0       True    stored artifact for revision 'main@sha1:cf1664a0'

Next, verify Kustomizations:

flux get kustomizations

You should see:

NAME                    REVISION                 READY   MESSAGE
bb-app-2demo-kustomize  2-demo@sha1:7dfa8105     True    Applied revision: 2-demo@sha1:7dfa8105

7. Confirm Kubernetes Resources

List your namespaces and workload in 2-demo:

kubectl get ns
kubectl get all -n 2-demo

You should observe the block-buster Deployment, Service, and Pods running version 7.2.0.

8. Access the Application

Find the NodePort for the block-buster-service:

kubectl get svc block-buster-service -n 2-demo

Open your browser at http://<NODE_IP>:<NODE_PORT>. You’ll see the updated “Block Buster” game interface running version 7.2.0:

Links and References

• FluxCD Source Toolkit – GitRepository
• FluxCD Kustomize Toolkit – Kustomization
• Kubernetes Documentation
• GitOps with FluxCD
• Docker Hub – block-buster-dev Image