Remove viper from minikube and driver packages - part 1 #21683

nirs · 2025-10-02T18:15:42Z

Currently we use viper outside of cmd/minikube/cmd package in pkg/minikube/** and pkg/drivers/**. This introduce 2 issues:

Make the code hard to test by using global state. For example for testing interactive mode we must use viper.SetBool("interactive", false). This may break another test assuming interactive mode.
Error prone - since the flag names are private constants in the cmd/minikube/cmd package, we use strings (e.g. "interactive") in other package. A typo in the flag name will silently provide the wrong value, ignoring the user request.

This is the first part in removing viper calls outside of the cmd/minikube/cmd package.

Preparations

run: Introduce minikube/run.Options - add the basic infrastructure for passing options from the command down to the drivers via the registry.Configurator() interface.
run: Prepare for using run.Options in vment - pass options to registry.StatusChecker() interface to allow passing options from krunkit driver.
run: Add run.Options.NonInteractive option - pass the --interactive flag
run: Introduce the flags package

Removals

vment: Remove viper interactive check - remove viper.GetBool("interactive") check in vment.ValidateHelper()
firewall: Remove viper interactive check - remove viper.GetBool("interactive") check in firewall.UnblockBootpd()
notify: Remove viper interactive checks - remove viper.GetBool("interactive") check in notify.shouldCheckURLVersion()

Known issues

When starting a stopped cluster we get the default Driver.Options, but we should really use Options from the command line. I did not find yet how the Driver section from ~/.minikube/machines/NAME/config.json is parsed and converted to a concrete Driver struct.

Part-of #21670

k8s-ci-robot · 2025-10-02T18:15:45Z

Skipping CI for Draft Pull Request.
If you want CI signal for your change, please convert it to an actual PR.
You can still manually trigger a test run with /test all

k8s-ci-robot · 2025-10-02T18:15:49Z

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nirs · 2025-10-02T18:19:35Z

/cc @ComradeProgrammer
/cc @afbjorklund

nirs · 2025-10-02T19:14:51Z

/ok-to-test

medyagh

thank you for doing this ! this is gonna make minikube development much safer (and less suprises)

medyagh · 2025-10-02T19:29:24Z

/ok-to-test

pkg/minikube/node/start.go

pkg/drivers/common/common.go

pkg/minikube/run/options.go

cmd/minikube/cmd/root.go

medyagh

we should make to document this in the contributors guide
to never make a viper call outside CMD packages

nirs · 2025-10-06T20:37:15Z

@medyagh I remove all options, leaving only the infrastructure for adding options from the root command down to the driver.

The next pull commits (or pull requests) will remove one viper option per commit to keep this easy to review and less likely to break.

nirs · 2025-10-07T18:55:47Z

cmd/minikube/cmd/root.go

+// commandOptions creates minikube runtime options from the command line flags.
+// Flags that must be handled outside of the cmd package must be added to
+// run.Options.
+func commandOptions() *run.Options {


This is moved to cmd/flags.Options in later commit since this function does not work for sharing options in cmd/config.

Preparing for removal of viper usage outside of cmd/minikube/cmd package, add a minikube/run.Options type for keeping command line options from viper and passing to the library code. We need to pass options through many layers: cmd -> node -> machine -> registry -> driver The libmachine Driver API does not have a way to pass options, so we need to keep the options in the driver struct. drivers/common.CommonDriver keeps now Options field. This field is initialized when a driver is configured in the registry, registry.Configurator interface accept now *run.Options. Configuration happens only when the cluster is created. Driver.Options is not persisted so on the next start options contains the zero value with the defaults. The driver config function is called by the machine package, which is called by the node package, which called from the `start`, `node add`, and `node start` command. We go back from the driver config function and add the options argument until we reach the command code. In the cmd package, the options are created by new commandOptions() helper.

To remove viper.GetBool("interactive") call in vment.ValidateHelper() we need to pass the options to the function. It is called from minikube/registry/drvs/krunkit.status(). Update registry.StatusChecker to accept *run.Options, and relevant code so options pass from `start`, `node add`, and `node start` command pass options to the driver status() function. Unify the way we create the options in the cmd package. The options are always created in the runCommand function, so we have one call per command that need to pass options down to minikube. With this change we are ready to remove the first viper call.

This option keeps the value of the --interactive flag. We keep the negative value so the zero value of run.Options use the default value. This expose the default options for drivers, using zero value of drivers/common/CommandDriver.Options. This options should be handled in several places, this change only add the option.

We need to use pass options from cmd/config, but commandOptions() is a private function of the cmd package. We want to have single function for creating runtime options shared with the minikube packages, accessible from cmd and cmd/config (and other future packages). Add a new cmd/flags package keeping the flags names needed for creating run.Options and move commandOptions() to flag.Options(). The `interactive` constant was moved from form start_flags.go to the new package. We can move later all flags to the new package, but I started with the minimal change.

vment.ValidateHelper() accept now *run.Options and use options.NonInteractive to check if interaction is allowed. Update callers to pass options from the minikube command. Testing non-interactive mode: % sudo rm /etc/sudoers.d/vmnet-helper % sudo -k % out/minikube start -d krunkit --interactive=false 😄 minikube v1.37.0 on Darwin 26.0.1 (arm64) ✨ Using the krunkit (experimental) driver based on user configuration 🤷 Exiting due to PROVIDER_KRUNKIT_NOT_FOUND: The 'krunkit' provider was not found: exit status 1: sudo: a password is required 💡 Suggestion: Install and configure vment-helper 📘 Documentation: https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/reference/drivers/krunkit/ Testing interactive mode: % out/minikube start -d krunkit 😄 minikube v1.37.0 on Darwin 26.0.1 (arm64) 💡 Unable to run vmnet-helper without a password To configure vment-helper to run without a password, please check the documentation: https://github.com/nirs/vmnet-helper/#granting-permission-to-run-vmnet-helper Password: ✨ Using the krunkit (experimental) driver based on user configuration 👍 Starting "minikube" primary control-plane node in "minikube" cluster 🔥 Creating krunkit VM (CPUs=2, Memory=6144MB, Disk=20000MB) ... 🐳 Preparing Kubernetes v1.34.1 on Docker 28.4.0 ... 🔗 Configuring bridge CNI (Container Networking Interface) ... 🔎 Verifying Kubernetes components... ▪ Using image gcr.io/k8s-minikube/storage-provisioner:v5 🌟 Enabled addons: default-storageclass, storage-provisioner 🏄 Done! kubectl is now configured to use "minikube" cluster and "default" namespace by default

filewall.UnblockBootpd() accepts now *run.Options and use it to check if we can interact with the user. Update callers to pass options. To make this work for drivers, we initialize the driver CommonDriver with the options from the command line in the driver configure() functions for vfkit, qemu, and krunkit. Other drivers do not need this flag so they use the zero value with the defaults.

The notify helpers accept now *run.Options and use it to check if we can interact with the user. Modify callers to pass options using cmd/flags.Options().

k8s-ci-robot · 2025-10-09T18:17:49Z

@nirs: The following test failed, say /retest to rerun all failed tests or /retest-required to rerun all mandatory failed tests:

Test name	Commit	Details	Required	Rerun command
pull-minikube-integration	`ec1ad26`	link	true	`/test pull-minikube-integration`

Full PR test history. Your PR dashboard. Please help us cut down on flakes by linking to an open issue when you hit one in your PR.

Instructions for interacting with me using PR comments are available here. If you have questions or suggestions related to my behavior, please file an issue against the kubernetes-sigs/prow repository. I understand the commands that are listed here.

minikube-pr-bot · 2025-10-09T19:12:34Z

kvm2 driver with docker runtime

┌───────────────────┬──────────┬────────────────────────┐
│      COMMAND      │ MINIKUBE │ MINIKUBE  ( PR 21683 ) │
├───────────────────┼──────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ minikube start    │ 45.5s    │ 44.2s                  │
│ ⚠️  enable ingress │ 16.6s    │ 27.7s ⚠️                │
└───────────────────┴──────────┴────────────────────────┘

Times for minikube start: 47.6s 45.4s 44.4s 45.0s 45.3s
Times for minikube (PR 21683) start: 44.5s 43.5s 45.3s 43.3s 44.5s

Times for minikube ingress: 16.3s 16.9s 15.8s 17.9s 15.9s
Times for minikube (PR 21683) ingress: 15.8s 15.8s 75.3s 15.9s 15.8s

docker driver with docker runtime

┌────────────────┬──────────┬────────────────────────┐
│    COMMAND     │ MINIKUBE │ MINIKUBE  ( PR 21683 ) │
├────────────────┼──────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ minikube start │ 23.3s    │ 23.8s                  │
│ enable ingress │ 11.6s    │ 11.4s                  │
└────────────────┴──────────┴────────────────────────┘

Times for minikube start: 24.7s 20.2s 25.9s 22.5s 23.1s
Times for minikube (PR 21683) start: 21.1s 25.9s 22.8s 22.8s 26.6s

Times for minikube ingress: 10.6s 10.6s 13.7s 10.6s 12.6s
Times for minikube (PR 21683) ingress: 12.6s 10.6s 10.6s 12.6s 10.6s

docker driver with containerd runtime

┌────────────────┬──────────┬────────────────────────┐
│    COMMAND     │ MINIKUBE │ MINIKUBE  ( PR 21683 ) │
├────────────────┼──────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ minikube start │ 20.8s    │ 21.3s                  │
│ enable ingress │ 26.7s    │ 26.3s                  │
└────────────────┴──────────┴────────────────────────┘

Times for minikube start: 19.7s 20.2s 23.9s 19.9s 20.5s
Times for minikube (PR 21683) start: 22.8s 19.3s 21.6s 20.9s 21.9s

Times for minikube ingress: 20.1s 20.1s 20.1s 50.1s 23.1s
Times for minikube (PR 21683) ingress: 20.1s 20.1s 21.1s 50.2s 20.1s

minikube-pr-bot · 2025-10-09T20:40:18Z

Here are the number of top 10 failed tests in each environments with lowest flake rate.

Environment	Test Name	Flake Rate
Docker_Windows (1 failed)	TestErrorSpam/setup(gopogh)	Unknown

Besides the following environments also have failed tests:

KVM_Linux_crio: 3 failed (gopogh)
Docker_Linux_crio: 56 failed (gopogh)
Docker_Linux_crio_arm64: 42 failed (gopogh)

To see the flake rates of all tests by environment, click here.

k8s-ci-robot added the do-not-merge/work-in-progress Indicates that a PR should not merge because it is a work in progress. label Oct 2, 2025

k8s-ci-robot requested review from medyagh and prezha October 2, 2025 18:15

k8s-ci-robot added cncf-cla: yes Indicates the PR's author has signed the CNCF CLA. size/L Denotes a PR that changes 100-499 lines, ignoring generated files. labels Oct 2, 2025

nirs mentioned this pull request Oct 2, 2025

move viper calls from packages into cmd to improve testability/resusablitily #21670

Open

k8s-ci-robot requested review from ComradeProgrammer and afbjorklund October 2, 2025 18:19

nirs force-pushed the remove-viper-checks branch from b5925b8 to 1a26ae8 Compare October 2, 2025 18:51

k8s-ci-robot added the ok-to-test Indicates a non-member PR verified by an org member that is safe to test. label Oct 2, 2025

nirs force-pushed the remove-viper-checks branch from 1a26ae8 to cf26111 Compare October 2, 2025 19:25

afbjorklund removed their request for review October 2, 2025 19:26

medyagh reviewed Oct 2, 2025

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medyagh requested changes Oct 2, 2025

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