Argo CD: Add App of Apps to kubara

The App of Apps pattern uses one parent Argo CD Application to manage a set of child Application resources. In kubara, the parent points to a Git folder; each manifest in that folder defines a separate child application.

Minimal setup

Add a parent application to the Argo CD override of the hub cluster, for example platform-configs/<cluster>/helm/argo-cd/additional-values.yaml:

bootstrapValues:
  applications:
    - name: app-of-apps
      namespace: argocd
      projectName: <cluster-stage>
      destination:
        serverName: <cluster>
      repoUrl: https://github.com/example/<repository>
      repoPath: apps
      info:
        - name: type
          value: app-of-apps

The referenced repository then contains one Argo CD Application manifest per child application:

apps/
├── vcluster-dev.yaml
├── vcluster-test.yaml
├── frontend.yaml
├── api-service.yaml
└── postgresql.yaml

This setup is not recursive. With repoPath: apps, Argo CD reads only the manifests directly in that directory. Child manifests placed in subfolders are ignored without an error, keep them flat in apps/, or enable directory.recurse: true on the parent application.

Ensure that the repository is allowed by the Argo CD project and that each child Application uses a permitted destination. Commit and push the changes.

This pattern is compatible with the repository contents generated through kubara generate. You can just add your parent app inside the pre-defined folder structure:

platform-components/
platform-configs/
└── your-cluster
    └── apps/
        ├── frontend.yaml
        ├── api-service.yaml
        └── postgresql.yaml

And configure the parent to point to that location:

# platform-configs/<cluster>/helm/argo-cd/additional-values.yaml
bootstrapValues:
  applications:
    - name: app-of-apps
      namespace: argocd
      projectName: <cluster-stage>
      destination:
        serverName: <cluster>
      repoUrl: https://github.com/example/<your-kubara-repo>
      repoPath: platform-configs/<cluster>/apps
      info:
        - name: type
          value: app-of-apps

When to use it

1. Manage different / dynamic applications from a single folder

Use a shared folder as a small application catalog. For example, separate child manifests can deploy a frontend, an API, and a database from different charts or repositories and into different namespaces. Adding or removing an Application manifest changes what the parent manages.

2. Create vClusters

Use one child Application per vCluster when every instance needs its own name, namespace, domain, values, or lifecycle. Adding apps/vcluster-test.yaml makes the parent application create and reconcile that vCluster application.

kubara's label-based ApplicationSet pattern deploys vClusters onto the hub cluster and generates one vCluster application per matching cluster from a shared template. Because a cluster carries a single value per label key, that template produces one instance on the hub, so N vClusters would mean either N ApplicationSets with distinct labels or a different generator. App of Apps is the simpler fit when the goal is N independent vClusters on the same hub cluster: add one child Application manifest per vCluster to the folder, and the labels stay out of it.

For a concrete layout illustrating how multiple vClusters are provisioned through apps/ manifests using App of Apps, see the sveltos-cluster-management example in platform-setup-examples.

Supported application sources

Each child is an Argo CD Application, and its source can be a Helm chart, a Kustomize overlay, or a directory containing plain YAML manifests. The parent path itself may also use Helm or Kustomize.

App of Apps versus ApplicationSet

Use an ApplicationSet to generate multiple similar applications from one template, for example to roll out the same app to every cluster that carries the matching label:

cert-manager:
  status: enabled

Use App of Apps to group different applications that can have different sources, values, destinations, and lifecycles under one parent application. Both patterns can be used together.