Objectives & prerequisites

What the Sandcastle → Kubernetes hand-off lab teaches and what you need before starting.

Learning objectives

NoteLearning objectives
  • Identify a Sandcastle-produced Git branch as the durable input the composition layer consumes.
  • Promote the greeting value from rules/hello.yaml on that branch into the spec.value field of a Crossplane CompositeResource (XHelloWorldPico).
  • Demonstrate that the generated XR is byte-equivalent to the reference 05-xr.yaml the Hello Pico on Kubernetes lab ships — so it drops in without modification.
  • Recognise that the hand-off itself is the construct → compose boundary in the academy story Crossplane composes, Sandcastle constructs, Picos behave.

Prerequisites

NotePrerequisites
  • Completion of the Hello World Pico Sandcastle lab — you need the durable sandcastle/hello-world-pico branch on work/hello-world-pico-sandcastle/target-repo. If it is missing, the lab’s verify.sh will run the Sandcastle lab for you.
  • Familiarity with the Hello Pico on Kubernetes lab at the level of its walkthrough steps 1–4 (install Crossplane, install the Kubernetes provider, register the XRD and Composition). A cluster is not required for this lab; if you choose to apply the generated XR in a cluster afterwards, the canonical local minikube setup home is the Kubernetes course setup foundation.

Environment

  • Supported OS: macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel), Linux, or WSL.

  • Required shell: bash 3.2+ or zsh 5.0+.

  • Required tools (all invoked directly by the walkthrough):

    • bash and standard POSIX utilities (grep, sed, cat).
    • git — reads the Sandcastle-produced branch.
    • python3 — parses the rule value and validates the generated XR.

  • PATH expectation: bash, git, and python3 must all resolve on PATH. No cluster tooling (kubectl, helm, minikube) is required for this lab.

  • Estimated time: 15–30 minutes.

  • Cleanup step (also repeated at the end of the walkthrough):

    rm -rf work/handoff-sandcastle-to-kubernetes

Install commands

If any tool above is missing, install it using its upstream instructions before starting the walkthrough. On macOS with Homebrew:

brew install git python3

On Linux, use your distribution’s package manager (apt, dnf, etc.). Confirm each tool resolves before you begin:

command -v bash    && bash --version | head -1
command -v git     && git --version
command -v python3 && python3 --version

One-time setup (optional)

The hand-off script reads the Sandcastle-produced branch from work/hello-world-pico-sandcastle/target-repo by default. If your Sandcastle work-root is elsewhere, set SANDCASTLE_WORK when invoking handoff.sh or verify.sh.