tangle

Tangle

tangle (noun): A theoretical name for a group of octopuses since in the wild they are solitary creatures.

Tangle makes using with multiple ArgoCDs in a hub and spoke architecture fun (🎉) and easy (😅). Its does this by:

• Showing Applications across multiple ArgoCD.
• Showing manifest diffs for many Applications across multiple ArgoCD.
• Working equally well for your CI/CD tooling (i.e. available as JSON APIs to consume from your tools) and for your humans (via a website that's easy to embed into existing tools).
• Does all those things with mechanisms (i.e. worker pools) to limit load on ArgoCD components

Example: View all Applications with the env:test label

Visiting /applications?labels=env:test

Example: View diffs of all Applications with the env:test label from the test_gitops branch

Visiting /diffs?labels=env:test&targetRef=test_gitops

Installation

Tangle is distributed as a Docker image and can be installed on Kubernetes via Helm charts.

You can try out Tangle locally by:

• Cloning the repository and opening it as a Dev Container.
• Run task services to start a Kubernetes cluster with ArgoCD and a few Applications.
• Start Tangle with the following command.

docker run --rm -it -v `pwd`/integration:/config -e TANGLE_CONFIG_PATH=/config/tangle.yaml --network=host --env-file .env ghcr.io/ivanklee86/tangle:latest

Configuration

ArgoCD

Tangle uses a JWT to authenticate to ArgoCD. This can be configured in the Helm chart as follows:

configs:
  cm:
    accounts.YOUR_ACCOUNT_NAME: apiKey

  rbac:
    policy.csv: |
      p, role:tangle, applications, get, *, allow
      g, YOUR_ACCOUNT_NAME, role:tangle

A JWT can be then generated using the ArgoCD CLI using the following command:

argocd login # Using username/password or SSO
argocd account generate-token --account YOUR_ACCOUNT

Tangle

The tangle.yaml file is the primary configuration file and specifies how Tangle connects to your ArgoCD servers.

argocds: # This section defines ArgoCD instances.
  test:
    address: "localhost:8080" # Address of the ArgoCD instance.  Should NOT have https://
    insecure: true # Optional, can omit if ArgoCD has a proper certification.
    authTokenEnvVar: "ARGOCD_TOKEN"  # Name of environment variable containing ArgoCD JWT.
  prod:
    address: "localhost:8080"
    insecure: true
    authTokenEnvVar: "ARGOCD_PROD_TOKEN"

sortOrder:  # This section allows you to configure the order of ArgoCDs in the web UI.
  - test
  - prod

Additional configurations can be configured in the tangle.yaml or via environment variables with the TANGLE_<var> format.

Usage

API

Swagger documentation is exposed at /swagger.

Web UI

The Web UI is accessible at /.

Metrics

Prometheus metrics are exposed at /metrics