tilt-improvements

[Guptak12]

Description

Motivation: To improve the local development experience with Tilt by enabling ValidationMode=strict and fixing debugging issues. Currently, strict validation fails locally because the development container lacks the necessary Envoy binary, and debugging is hindered by leader election requirements in a single-replica setup.

What changed :

[Tiltfile]:

• Updated the development Dockerfile to use the Envoy base image (matching production) instead of golang:latest. This ensures the Envoy binary is present, which is required for strict validation.
• Aligned the binary installation path (/usr/local/bin/kgateway) with the production Dockerfile.
• Switched the default values file from [common-recommendations.yaml] to a dedicated [tilt-values.yaml] (aligning with [tilt-settings.yaml]).
• Relaxed [validate_registry] to warn instead of fail, supporting Kind clusters without explicit local registry configmaps.

[tilt-values.yaml]:

• Added KGW_DISABLE_LEADER_ELECTION: "false" to enable proper debugging in single-replica environments.
• Enabled validation.level: strict by default for local development.

Related issues:
Fixes #12956

Change Type

/kind feature
/kind fix

Changelog

"NONE"

Additional Notes

This change aligns the local Tilt development environment with the production Dockerfile structure. This is critical for developers working on features that require ValidationMode=strict, as the validation logic expects the Envoy binary to be present in the container, which was missing in the previous golang:latest based image.
It also fixes a common friction point where debugging would fail due to leader election issues in single-replica local clusters.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR improves the local Tilt development environment by aligning it with the production Dockerfile structure. It switches the development container base image from golang:latest to the Envoy base image, ensuring the Envoy binary is present for strict validation mode. The PR also introduces a dedicated tilt-values.yaml configuration file for local development settings.

Key Changes:

• Tiltfile now uses the Envoy base image (matching production) instead of golang:latest, with updated package installation and binary paths
• New tilt-values.yaml file configures strict validation mode, debug logging, and leader election settings for local development
• Simplified tilt-settings.yaml to reference the new tilt-values.yaml instead of test manifests

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

File	Description
tilt-values.yaml	New configuration file with strict validation enabled, debug logging, and leader election settings for local Tilt development
tilt-settings.yaml	Updated to use the new tilt-values.yaml instead of common-recommendations.yaml from test manifests
Tiltfile	Updated Dockerfile to use Envoy base image, aligned binary path with production, and relaxed registry validation to support Kind clusters

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