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Your First Extension#

In this topic, we'll teach you the fundamental concepts for building extensions. Make sure you have Node.js and Git installed....

Installing and Building the extension#

Simple Lens extension that adds "hello-world" page to a cluster menu.

Linux#

mkdir -p ~/.k8slens/extensions
git clone https://github.com/lensapp/lens-extension-samples.git
cp -pr lens-extension-samples/helloworld-sample ~/.k8slens/extensions

To build the extension you can use make or run the npm commands manually:

cd ~/.k8slens/extensions/helloworld-sample
make build

OR

cd ~/.k8slens/extensions/helloworld-sample
npm install
npm run build

Open Lens application and navigate to a cluster. You should see "Hello World" in the Lens sidebar menu.

Developing the extension#

Let's make a change to the message:

  • Change the message from Hello World from HelloWorld! to Hello Lens Extensions in page.tsx
  • Rebuild the extension
  • Reload the Lens window
  • You should see the updated message showing up.

Next steps#

In the next topic, Extension Anatomy, we'll take a closer look at the source code of the Hello World sample and explain key concepts.

You can find the source code of this tutorial at: lensapp/lens-extension-samples. The Extension Guides topic contains other samples, each illustrating a different Lens Extension API.

Last update: October 30, 2020