[bug] Error: flags cannot be placed before plugin name: --context

[jacksgt]

Hi there,
thank you for this excellent Emacs package! I've been using it since half a year and the experience is simply great.

Recently, I updated my system components and now I'm running a more recent version of Kubernetes / kubectl.
With this version, I'm getting the following error message:
Error: flags cannot be placed before plugin name: --context
Unfortunately, this completely breaks the package, since no other action can be performed.

*kubel-process* says the following:

[kubectl-command]
command: kubectl config current-context
[kubectl-command]
command: kubectl --context error: current-context is not set get Pods

$ kubectl version
Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"22", GitVersion:"v1.22.2", GitCommit:"8b5a19147530eaac9476b0ab82980b4088bbc1b2", GitTreeState:"archive", BuildDate:"2021-09-16T09:21:16Z", GoVersion:"go1.17.1", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}

I found this kubectl issue due to which this behavior was apparently introduced: kubernetes/kubectl#884

[abrochard]

Hey @jacksgt ,
Thank you for reporting this.
Looking at the *kubel-process*, I have a theory as to what is happening:

1. we run kubectl config current-context to try to determine which context you are using
2. that command fails and kubectl actually returns error: current-context is not set
3. we don't detect an error and set kubel-context to error: current-context is not set
4. we try to bring up the list of pods which runs kubectl --context $kubel-context get pods where $kubel-context is incorrectly set to that error message

To validate the theory (and also as a workaround), you can try setting your context to default with either:

1. kubectl config set-context default in your shell before running kubel
2. (setq kubel-context "default")

Let me know if this works.

[jacksgt]

Hi, thanks for getting back to me so quickly!

Indeed, I have the kubeconfig in a "non-standard" location (basically I'm using a separate kubeconfig for each project).
My plan was to invoke M-x kubel and then use K to set the location of that kubeconfig.
But that resulted in the above error.
Also calling kubectl config set-context default results in the same error message, even though kubectl then creates an empty kubeconfig:

apiVersion: v1
clusters: null
contexts:
- context:
    cluster: ""
    user: ""
  name: default
current-context: ""
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users: null

When I run (setq kubel-context "default") I get the error message Error in configuration: context was not found for specified context: default. However, now I can set my custom kubeconfig with K and afterwards switch to the appropriate context with C.

So in the end I think this was just user error. Though maybe the error message could be improved.
Thanks for taking the time to investigate!

[abrochard]

Awesome. Thank you for letting me know. Hopefully we can strengthen our error message in the future.