Add optional kubectl path to kubeconfig

[amaddio]

Problem

When managing different clusters with different kubectl (server) versions (kubelet api) one has to manually switch between the locally kubectl version. There is no prevention by default that one uses an unsupported kubectl version unless you use kubectl --match-server-version explicitly.

Workaround

We use asdf kubectl to switch between kubectl versions by adding .tool-versions to folders that automatically switch between kubectl versions. For example:

• folder cluster-a: kubectl 1.29.12
• folder cluster-b: kubectl 1.28.15

Suggested Solution

It would be nice to be able to specify the local kubectl version/path in the kubeconfig file. For the moment there is no such field in kubeconfig.v1: https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/config-api/kubeconfig.v1/.

I would suggest to extend cluster object by an kubectl-client attribute. It would look like this:

apiVersion: v1
clusters:
- cluster:
    server: https://1.2.3.4
  name: cluster-a
  kubectl-client: /path/to/kubectl/1.29.12
- cluster:
    server: https://5.6.7.8
  name: cluster-b
  kubectl-client: /path/to/kubectl/1.29.12
current-context: ""
kind: Config
preferences: {}

This general solution would make it possible to use different kubectl versions (binaries) per cluster. So one could use asdf, update-alternatives, brew etc.

If this issue is accepted I can build it and open a MR. But I wanted to make sure that the effort is worth it. I am already a kubernetes contributor.

[k8s-ci-robot]

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