kn plugins

The kn CLI supports the use of plugins. Plugins enable you to extend the functionality of your kn installation by adding custom commands and other shared commands that are not part of the core distribution of kn.

Warning

The plugins must be named with the prefix kn- to be detected by kn. For example, kn-func will be detected but func won't be detected.

kn source plugins

An event source plugin has the following characteristics:

• It has a name that is part of the kn source group.
• It provides CRUD sub-commands; create, update, delete, describe, and sometimes apply.
• It requires a mandatory --sink flag to be passed when using the create command.

List of Knative plugins

You can view all available kn plugins in the Knative Extensions repository.

Plugin	Description	Available via Homebrew?
kn-plugin-admin	kn plugin for managing a Kubernetes based Knative installation	Y
kn-plugin-diag	kn plugin for diagnosing issues by exposing detailed information for different layers of Knative objects	N
kn-plugin-event	kn plugin for sending events to Knative sinks	Y
kn-plugin-func	kn plugin for functions	Y
kn-plugin-migration	kn plugin for migrating Knative Services from one cluster to another	N
kn-plugin-operator	kn plugin for managing Knative with Knative Operator	N
kn-plugin-quickstart	kn plugin for developers to install a quickstart Knative cluster for experimentation purposes	Y
kn-plugin-service-log	kn plugin for showing the standard output of Knative Services	N
kn-plugin-source-kafka	kn plugin for managing Kafka event sources	Y
kn-plugin-source-kamelet	kn plugin for managing Kamelets and KameletBindings	Y

Manually install a plugin

You can manually install all plugins. To manually install a plugin:

1. Download the current release of the plugin from GitHub. See the list of Knative plugins you can download.
2. Rename the file to remove the OS and architecture information. For example, rename kn-admin-darwin-amd64 to kn-admin.
3. Make the plugin executable. For example, chmod +x kn-admin.
4. Move the file to a directory on your PATH. For example, /usr/local/bin.

Install a plugin by using Homebrew

You can install some plugins can be installed using the Knative plugins Homebrew Tap. For example, you can install the kn-admin plugin by running brew install knative-extensions/kn-plugins/admin.

List available plugins

You can list all available (installed) plugins by entering the command:

kn plugin list