Marking VirtualBox as deprecated

[divysinghvi]

Currently VirtualBox is marked as registry.Fallback and Virtualbox driver does not work for several years with minikube. So this could be deprecated like we did with the hyperkit.

[afbjorklund]

You need to add more information like platforms, I think the main VirtualBox problem was the networking change on macOS? And the missing support for macOS ARM, which is now available in 7.1.

• virtualbox: unable to start minikube on macOS Ventura #15274
• nice to have: Support VirtualBox on Arm64 Macos #21029

But it was the default on other platforms, and it was featured in the kubernetes course. So there might be more work to do.

• https://kubernetes.io/training/
• https://www.edx.org/learn/kubernetes/the-linux-foundation-introduction-to-kubernetes

[afbjorklund]

Note that both the course and the other k8s documentation is outdated, and that is "someone elses problem".

"Basic knowledge of Linux Command Line Interface (CLI) Basic knowledge of container technology like Docker, Rkt is required"

Like running outdated images in https://kubernetes.io/docs/tutorials/kubernetes-basics/deploy-app/deploy-intro/

"This tutorial uses a container that requires the AMD64 architecture. If you are using minikube on a computer with a different CPU architecture, you could try using minikube with a driver that can emulate AMD64. For example, the Docker Desktop driver can do this."

Eventually someone needs to sit down and really deprecate VirtualBox, Docker and x86 - so that it is more portable.

[divysinghvi]

thanks @afbjorklund Now i understand whole thing way better , didn't knew about the courses i will look more into virtualbox , @nirs what do you think apart from the normal deprecation what other things will be needed to be done

[nirs]

thanks @afbjorklund Now i understand whole thing way better , didn't knew about the courses i will look more into virtualbox , @nirs what do you think apart from the normal deprecation what other things will be needed to be done

• Mark the driver as deprecated
• Check that we don't recommend it as fallback driver - it should not happen once you mark it as deprecated
• Check the driver docs, they should also show that the driver is depracated.
• Add recommendation to use the preferred driver (vfkit)

[divysinghvi]

Sure i will do since i was the one who did the Hyperkit Deprecation PR , work seems exactly similar to that only

[afbjorklund]

Most of the external documentation does not need to pick a driver at all - but vfkit only works on macOS

[nirs]

Most of the external documentation does not need to pick a driver at all - but vfkit only works on macOS

Sure, we should recommend vfkit only for macOS, and recommend the preferred drivers for other OS.

[nirs]

@divysinghvi we may need to mark the driver as deprecated only on macOS. Check how other drivers deal with os differences in pkg/minikube/registry/drvs.

[afbjorklund]

But there is already a big warning shown, so making it deprecated is probably reasonable.

• discourge users of using virtualbox driver when other options are available #11913

╭───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│                                                                                                   │
│    You have selected "virtualbox" driver, but there are better options !                          │
│    For better performance and support consider using a different driver:                          │
│            - kvm2                                                                                 │
│            - qemu2                                                                                │
│                                                                                                   │
│    To turn off this warning run:                                                                  │
│                                                                                                   │
│            $ minikube config set WantVirtualBoxDriverWarning false                                │
│                                                                                                   │
│                                                                                                   │
│    To learn more about on minikube drivers checkout https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/drivers/    │
│    To see benchmarks checkout https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/benchmarks/cpuusage/              │
│                                                                                                   │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

For macOS, one might also want to clear out the two old unmaintained proprietary drivers?

[divysinghvi]

sure nirs i will look more into how these os difference drivers needs to be deprecated, i will keep in mind to update the docs also @afbjorklund can you elaborate more about the proprietary drivers ? thanks

[nirs]

For macOS, one might also want to clear out the two old unmaintained proprietary drivers?

You mean parallels and vmware? Any idea what it the status of these drivers?

[afbjorklund]

Haven't seen any updates in years, and they are untested as far as I know?

https://github.com/minikube-machine/machine-driver-parallels

https://github.com/minikube-machine/machine-driver-vmware

[divysinghvi]

I also tried to look into recent issues or something regarding parallels and vmware i was not able find much

[nirs]

Haven't seen any updates in years, and they are untested as far as I know?

https://github.com/minikube-machine/machine-driver-parallels

https://github.com/minikube-machine/machine-driver-vmware

Are you sure we use the the docker-machine based drivers in minikube? auxdriver mentions only hyperkit and kvm.