# Working with multiple kubeconfig files

Working with multiple kubernetes clusters can be a hassle, starting with the kubeconfig file, where you have to add all your clusters configs into that file, and update it manually whenever you want to add a new cluster. That's what I thought is the only way, but then I found another way, much simpler and provides a better developer experience.

Surprisingly, there is no extra tools needed, its just a feature of kubectl, as it reads an environment variable tells it where to look for kubeconfig **files**. 


## Prepare kubeconfig files

create a new directory in my home  folder, will call it `clusters`:

```
mkdir clusters
```

then copy our clusters kubeconfig files,
this will copy `kubeconfig1` and `kubeconfig2` to the new directory
we just created.

```
cp kubeconfig1 kubeconfig2 ~/clusters
```

For a better example we will assume that kubeconfig1 is a sandbox cluster,
kubeconfig2 is a kubeconfig file for staging.

```
cd ~/clusters
mv kubeconfig1 sandbox.yml
mv kubeconfig2 staging.yml
```

result:
```
clusters
├── exp.yml
├── test.yml
├── dev.yml
├── production.yml
├── sandbox.yml
└── staging.yml
```

now we are ready to tell kubectl to use these files

## Configure shell

When kubectl command is executed, it checks where to find kubeconfig files, 
if nothing is specified, it falls back to the default file `~/.kube/config`

We can tell kubectl to use the files we have prepared, by setting the environment 
variable `KUBECONFIG` with a list (separated by a colon ":") of files, they can be anywhere,
they don't need to be in the same directory even.

Open your shell and set the variable

```
export KUBECONFIG="~/clusters/sandbox.yml:~/clusters/staging.yml"
```

Now use kubectl to get list of contexts, I will use [kubectx](https://github.com/ahmetb/kubectx) 

note: the list of contexts will depend on the names used in the kubeconfig files (not the file names)

```
$ kubectx

exp
k8s.test.com
k8s.dev.eg
production.company.org
sandbox
staging
```

Make sure to set that variable every time your shell starts, you can do that by setting it in `.bash_profile` or `.zshrc`, depends on your shell.

```
// .bash_profile
export ...

export KUBECONFIG="~/clusters/sandbox.yml:~/clusters/staging.yml"

export ...
```

Tada ! thats it, you are ready to get going and add as many files as you want.

## Automate detection of kubeconfig files

Remember that directory we created in the first step? We can write a tiny script
that loops over the files in that directory and set the `KUBECONFIG` variable.

```
# default kubeconfig
FILES="$HOME/.kube/config"

# create clusters directory if its not created
CLUSTERS_DIR="$HOME/clusters"
echo "creating clusters dir: $CLUSTERS_DIR"
mkdir -p "$CLUSTERS_DIR"
test CLUSTERS_DIR

for cluster in `find $CLUSTERS_DIR -type f -name "*.yml"`
do
  echo "found cluster: $cluster"
  FILES="$cluster:$FILES"
done

export KUBECONFIG=$FILES
```

Will not go through the code details in here, but you can copy that script into a file
and source that files in your `.bash_profile`.

That's all folks!