Skip to content

Installation overview

Coxswain can be installed three ways. Choose the one that fits your workflow:

Method When to use
Helm Production; values-driven configuration, easy upgrades
Kustomize GitOps without Helm; customise with overlays
Raw manifests Quick evaluations; no tooling beyond kubectl

Prerequisites

All install methods share the same prerequisites:

  • Kubernetes 1.30+
  • Gateway API CRDs (standard channel, v1.5.x or later matching the Coxswain release):
kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/gateway-api/releases/latest/download/standard-install.yaml
  • RBAC permission to create ClusterRole, ClusterRoleBinding, Namespace, and Lease objects.

Supported Kubernetes distributions

Coxswain has been tested on:

  • OrbStack (local)
  • kind (CI and local)
  • Vanilla kubeadm clusters

Any conformant Kubernetes 1.30+ distribution should work. File an issue if you encounter distribution-specific behaviour.

Resource requirements

Default resource requests in the Helm chart:

Resource Request Limit
CPU 100m 500m
Memory 128Mi 256Mi

See Running in production for tuning guidance.