Vovando Dev

For some recent tasks, I needed to work with Argo CD. Since I currently don’t have access to any “free” cloud services like Azure, AWS, or GCP to spin up a Kubernetes cluster, I started searching for local alternatives to run it on my macOS-based laptop. As Docker Desktop recently became a paid solution for commercial projects, I decided to go with Minikube and Podman instead.

On a brand new, clean macOS installation, install Brew, then use Brew to install Podman, followed by Minikube.

brew install podman

After installing, you need to create and start your first Podman machine:

podman machine init

podman machine start

You can then verify the installation information using:

podman info

brew install minikube

It’s recommended to run minikube with the podman driver and CRI-O container runtime (except when using Rootless Podman):

minikube start --driver=podman --container-runtime=cri-o

To make podman the default driver:

minikube config set driver podman

kubectl get po -A

With our local Kubernetes environment now set up and running on macOS using Minikube and Podman, we’re ready to take the next step. Now that the groundwork is in place, we can move forward and dive into setting up GitOps with Argo CD. This will allow us to manage and automate our Kubernetes deployments directly from our Git repositories, keeping everything streamlined and version-controlled. Let’s get started with installing and configuring Argo CD for a seamless GitOps experience!