Running ArgoCD locally

Run ArgoCD outside of Kubernetes

During development, it might be viable to run ArgoCD outside of a Kubernetes cluster. This will greatly speed up development, as you don't have to constantly build, push and install new ArgoCD Docker images with your latest changes.

You will still need a working Kubernetes cluster, as described in the Contribution Guide, where ArgoCD will store all of its resources.

If you followed the Contribution Guide in setting up your toolchain, you can run ArgoCD locally with these simple steps:

Scale down any ArgoCD instance in your cluster

First make sure that ArgoCD is not running in your development cluster by scaling down the deployments:

kubectl -n argocd scale deployment/argocd-application-controller --replicas 0
kubectl -n argocd scale deployment/argocd-dex-server --replicas 0
kubectl -n argocd scale deployment/argocd-repo-server --replicas 0
kubectl -n argocd scale deployment/argocd-server --replicas 0
kubectl -n argocd scale deployment/argocd-redis --replicas 0

Start local services

When you use the virtualized toolchain, starting local services is as simple as running

make start

This will start all ArgoCD services and the UI in a Docker container and expose the following ports to your host:

The ArgoCD API server on port 8080
The ArgoCD UI server on port 4000

You can now use either the web UI by pointing your browser to http://localhost:4000 or use the CLI against the API at http://localhost:8080. Be sure to use the --insecure and --plaintext options to the CLI.

As an alternative to using the above command line parameters each time you call argocd CLI, you can set the following environment variables:

export ARGOCD_SERVER=127.0.0.1:8080
export ARGOCD_OPTS="--plaintext --insecure"

Scale up ArgoCD in your cluster

Once you have finished testing your changes locally and want to bring back ArgoCD in your development cluster, simply scale the deployments up again:

kubectl -n argocd scale deployment/argocd-application-controller --replicas 1
kubectl -n argocd scale deployment/argocd-dex-server --replicas 1
kubectl -n argocd scale deployment/argocd-repo-server --replicas 1
kubectl -n argocd scale deployment/argocd-server --replicas 1
kubectl -n argocd scale deployment/argocd-redis --replicas 1

Run your own ArgoCD images on your cluster

For your final tests, it might be necessary to build your own images and run them in your development cluster.

You might need to create a account on Docker Hub if you don't have one already. Once you created your account, login from your development environment:

docker login

Create and push Docker images

You will need to push the built images to your own Docker namespace:

export IMAGE_NAMESPACE=youraccount

If you don't set IMAGE_TAG in your environment, the default of :latest will be used. To change the tag, export the variable in the environment:

export IMAGE_TAG=1.5.0-myrc

Then you can build & push the image in one step:

DOCKER_PUSH=true make image

Configure manifests for your image

With IMAGE_NAMESPACE and IMAGE_TAG still set, run

make manifests

to build a new set of installation manifests which include your specific image reference.

!!!note Do not commit these manifests to your repository. If you want to revert the changes, the easiest way is to unset IMAGE_NAMESPACE and IMAGE_TAG from your environment and run make manifests again. This will re-create the default manifests.

Configure your cluster with custom manifests

The final step is to push the manifests to your cluster, so it will pull and run your image:

kubectl -n argocd --force -f manifests/install.yaml

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