Kubernetes Node-Local DNS Cache

April 14, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

This is the repository for Kubernetes Node-Local DNS Cache.

Building

make targets:

targetdescription
all, buildbuild all binaries
testrun unit tests
containersbuild the containers
images-cleanclear image build artifacts from workdir
pushpush containers to the registry
helpthis help message
versionshow package version
{build,containers,push}-ARCHdo action for specific ARCH
all-{build,containers,push}do action for all ARCH
only-push-BINARYpush just BINARY
  • Setting VERBOSE=1 will show additional build logging.
  • Setting VERSION will override the container version tag.

Vulnerability patching

Follow the instructions below depending on the vulnerability, then send a PR. Once the PR has merged, a new release tag should be cut by a maintainer. The rest of the release process is described further down.

Bumping Go compiler/standard library

Update the BUILD_IMAGE in Makefile.

Bumping base images

Update the IPTIMAGE in rules.mk.

Bumping Go dependencies

go get DEPENDENCY@VERSION
go mod tidy
go mod vendor

Release process

Follow these steps to make changes and release a new binary.

  1. Make the necessary code changes and create a PR.
  2. Build and test locally (make images-clean; make build; make containers; make test).
  3. The same steps are executed via the presubmit script presubmits.sh which is run by the test-infra prow job.
  4. Merge the PR.
  5. Cut a new release tag. We use semantic versioning to name releases. Example:
    git tag -a 1.21.4 -m "Build images using golang 1.17."
    git push upstream 1.21.4
    
  6. Wait for container images to be pushed via cloudbuild yaml. This will be done automatically by k8s.io/test-infra/.../k8s-staging-dns.yaml. A manual cloud build can be submitted via gcloud builds submit --config cloudbuild.yaml, but this requires owner permissions in k8s-staging-dns project. The automated job pushes images for all architectures and makes them available in gcr.io/k8s-staging-dns. Status for build jobs can be checked at - https://testgrid.k8s.io/sig-network-dns#dns-push-images
  7. Promote the images to gcr.io/k8s-artifacts-prod using the process described in this link. The image SHAs should be added to images/k8s-staging-dns/images.yaml. The SHAs can be obtained by running the command python parse-image-sha.py <TAG> This will return the SHAs for kube-dns as well as node-cache images. Node-cache images are always promoted, kube-dns images are promoted if there is a change to kubedns/vulnerability fix.
  8. Images will be available in the repo registry.k8s.io/dns/. The node-cache image with tag 1.15.14 can be found at registry.k8s.io/dns/k8s-dns-node-cache:1.15.14. Older versions are at registry.k8s.io/k8s-dns-node-cache:
  9. Prepare a PR for the kubernetes/kubernetes repository to switch to the new version of the containers. Example - https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/106189. Trigger the optional presubmit pull-kubernetes-e2e-gci-gce-kube-dns-nodecache and correct your PR if needed before merging.
  10. Verify the nodecache-related tabs of the test grid at https://testgrid.k8s.io/sig-network-gce for regressions caused by the new image and revert if needed.

Version compatibility

There is no version compatibility requirements with Kubernetes releases. Version numbers in this repo are not related to Kubernetes versions.