Upbound Crossplane (UXP)

Upbound Crossplane (UXP) is the AI-native distribution of Crossplane by Upbound. Crossplane is a framework for building your own control plane.

Tip

Upbound Crossplane is a key ingredient in building out a platform powered by an intelligent control plane architecture. Learn about how UXP safely brings AI intelligence into your control plane's reconcile loop with Intelligent Controllers.

Quick Start

Installation with the up CLI

1. Install the Upbound CLI.

   curl -sL https://cli.upbound.io | sh

   To install with Homebrew:

   brew install upbound/tap/up

2. Install UXP to a Kubernetes cluster.

   # Make sure your ~/.kube/config file points to your cluster
   up uxp install

Installation With Helm

1. Add upbound-stable chart repository.

   helm repo add upbound-stable https://charts.upbound.io/stable && helm repo update

2. Install the latest stable version of UXP.

   helm install crossplane --namespace crossplane-system --create-namespace upbound-stable/crossplane --devel

Note

Helm requires the use of --devel flag for versions with suffixes, like v2.0.1-up.1. The Helm repository Upbound uses is the stable repository, so use of that flag is only a workaround. You will always get the latest stable version of Upbound Crossplane.

Upgrade from upstream Crossplane

Important

Version Upgrade Rule: To meet the upstream Crossplane needs, ensure there is at most one minor version difference for Crossplane versions during upgrades.

To upgrade from upstream Crossplane, the target UXP version should match the Crossplane version until the -up.N suffix. You can increment at most one minor version between Crossplane versions to follow upstream guidelines.

Examples:

• ✅ Allowed: Crossplane v2.0.1 → UXP v2.0.1-up.N (same Crossplane version)
• ✅ Allowed: Crossplane v2.0.1 → UXP v2.1.0-up.N (one minor version diff in Crossplane)
• ✅ Allowed: Crossplane v2.0.1 → UXP v2.0.5-up.N (multiple patch versions allowed)
• ❌ Not allowed: Crossplane v2.0.1 → UXP v2.2.0-up.N (two minor version diff in Crossplane)

Required upgrade path for larger Crossplane version gaps: If you want to upgrade from Crossplane v2.0.1 to UXP v2.2.1-up.N, follow this incremental approach to meet upstream requirements:

1. Crossplane v2.0.1 → UXP v2.1.0-up.N
2. UXP v2.1.0-up.N → UXP v2.2.1-up.N

Using up CLI

# Assuming it is installed in "crossplane-system" with release name "crossplane".
up uxp upgrade -n crossplane-system

If you'd like to upgrade to a specific version, run the following:

# Assuming it is installed in "crossplane-system" with release name "crossplane".
up uxp upgrade vX.Y.Z-up.N -n crossplane-system

Using Helm

# Assuming it is installed in "crossplane-system" with release name "crossplane".
helm upgrade crossplane --namespace crossplane-system upbound-stable/crossplane --devel

If you'd like to upgrade to a specific version, run the following:

# Assuming it is installed in "crossplane-system" with release name "crossplane".
helm upgrade crossplane --namespace crossplane-system upbound-stable/crossplane --devel --version vX.Y.Z-up.N

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md

Releases

After each minor Crossplane release, a corresponding patched and hardened version of Upbound Crossplane will be released after 2 weeks at the latest.

After the minor release of UXP, we will update that version with UXP-specific patches by incrementing -up.X suffix as well as upstream patches by incrementing the patch version to the corresponding number.

An example timeframe would be like the following:

• Crossplane v2.0.0 is released.
• 2 weeks bake period.
• The latest version in release-2.0 is now v2.0.2
• The first release of UXP for v2.0 would be v2.0.2-up.1.
  • We take the latest patched version at the end of 2 weeks, not v2.0.0-up.1 for example, if there is a patch release.
• Crossplane v2.0.3 is released after the initial 2 weeks bake period.
• UXP v2.0.3-up.1 will be released immediately to accommodate the fix coming with the patch version.