GitOps and the Manifest Dilemma - Helm, Kustomize, Crossplane, Kro, and Beyond

Explore the evolving landscape of Kubernetes manifest management tools and their alignment with GitOps principles in this conference talk. Examine the fundamental differences between traditional templating tools like Helm and Kustomize that render manifests outside the cluster, versus newer approaches using in-cluster controllers and Custom Resource Definitions such as Crossplane, KubeVela, and Kro. Discover how these two distinct paradigms differ not only in their technical implementation but also in their integration capabilities with popular GitOps platforms including Argo CD and Flux. Learn about the strengths and limitations of each approach through practical comparisons, and understand how the fragmented ecosystem of manifest-generation tools impacts scalable and maintainable Kubernetes deployments. Gain insights into the core design philosophies, execution models, and syntax variations across different tools to make informed decisions about which approaches best suit your GitOps workflows and organizational needs.