Describe and document profile usage

[timoreimann]

Is this a BUG REPORT or FEATURE REQUEST?: Feature request

Support for multiple profiles was added a while ago. However, it is not clear to me how to use them properly, and documentation does not seem to be available.

My general understanding is that profiles can be used to run multiple environments within a single minikube instance. The use case I have in mind is to have one profile for running traefik integration tests and another one for arbitrary, individual usages. I'd like to be able to switch between these when needed.

Here's a list of things I tried and questions I had but couldn't completely understand:

• I changed the profile via minikube profile foobar. Apart from the acknowledgement on the shell, however, there is no indication of anything like an environment change. Is anything else happening in the background?
• If I stop minikube and start it again, I can see that the context changed to the new profile. Is this the way it's supposed to be used, or is there some other workflow I should follow?
• What happens when I pass the --profile CLI switch? Is this equivalent to running minikube profile <profile> prior to the actual command I want to execute?
• How do I determine the currently active profile?
• How do I delete a profile?
• What information is contained in a profile?
• How do profiles and VM driver instances (e.g., Virtualbox machines) relate to each other?

Environment:

Minikube version: v0.24.1

• OS: Mac
• VM Driver: virtualbox
• ISO version: minikube-v0.23.6.iso

Anything else do we need to know:

I'd be happy to contribute documentation given someone can provide some feedback to my questions.

Thanks.

[r2d4]

cc @aaron-prindle

[tommyknows]

Hi,
This is definitely necessary. I can't seem to find anything about the relationship between vm-drivers and profiles, like:
Are profiles working with every vm-driver?
Right now, vm-driver=none does not seem to work (which kinda makes sense, but is not documented anywhere), and vm-driver=kvm2 does not work (see issue #2274).

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[timoreimann]

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[timoreimann]

Still seems quite necessary.

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[gmfx]

Still necessary.

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[tstromberg]

This would be great. Help wanted!

[gmfx]

Happy to chip in. @timoreimann @tstromberg

[ihcsim]

I posted a write-up on what I've learned about profiles here. Let me know if it aligns with your experience. Welcome all feedback and corrections.

[tstromberg]

It isn't perfect, but profiles are now documented:

https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/reference/commands/profile/