Implement option to uninstall Stacks and Demos

[sbernauer]

Comment with more information on the deletion status/process: #187 (comment)

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Update after a discussion on 2025-11-26:

In case, a user wants to try out a demo and uninstall it afterwards, it should be documented, how to do this. stackablectl should provide an option for it.

• All resources with a Stackable label should be removed, including the data (PersistentVolumes). That means that all top-level resources, which are not (indirectly) owned by a Stackable labeled resource, must be labeled accordingly, e.g. the namespace a demo is installed in.
• Demos and stacks should be installed in the non-default namespace.
• External tools like PostgreSQL in the demo/stacks namespace will therefore also be removed.
• The first version of this removal "tool" shows a warning and provides no option to be less destructive and keep resources.

---

Initial description:

As a user
I want to be able to uninstall a stack or demo by itself, after I'm done looking at it
to have a clean cluster again and not have to remove things manually, which is error prone.

• What should be uninstalled, should operators be left behind?
• What about multiple stacks in the same namespace? What about shared things like a ZooKeeper in two stacks. we could try and have only one ZK and label it as being part of two stacks, in a sort of dependency tree.
• Should a demo be always in a dedicated namespace? Deleting a namespace will not delete cluster-scoped resources
• What about removing Redis/Postgres etc. that is part of a demo?
• What about data? I.e. PVCs? maybe there could be uninstall vs purge and purge also removes data.
• What about cluster scoped resources? How do we make sure they do not comflict with each other?

Removing

• some Manifests need to be deleted
• Helm stuff needs to be uninstalled (i.e. Postgres)

Related ADR: https://docs.stackable.tech/home/stable/contributor/adr/adr031-resource-labels

Random unrelated code dump, do not execute :P

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

CONTEXT=$(kubectl config current-context)
CLUSTER=$(kubectl config view -o jsonpath="{.contexts[?(@.name==\"$CONTEXT\")].context.cluster}")

echo "You are about to run a destructive operation"
echo "Current kube context : $CONTEXT"
echo "Current cluster      : $CLUSTER"
echo

read -r -p "Do you want to continue? (y/N): " CONFIRM

if [[ "$CONFIRM" != "y" && "$CONFIRM" != "Y" ]]; then
  echo "Aborted."
  exit 1
fi

echo "Continuing..."

kubectl delete ns stackable-operators || true
kubectl get crd -o name | grep stackable | xargs kubectl delete || true
kubectl delete --all pvc || true

[sbernauer]

Just dropping a comment i send in slack for reference

Addressed all comment in my current branch, will be merged soonish
Regarding the uninstall: For me there are some questions left.
When uninstalling a demo should we uninstall the stack and release as well?
Should we remove e.g. the SupersetDB resource and the superset init k8s Job? (If not future equally named Supersets will not start)
Should we remove the pvcs of the kafka? the postgres? the minio?
IMHO this is related to stackabletech/issues#237
and we have #187 for this on stackablectl side of things

[adwk67]

Here's a note from the same slack chat:

Yes, I agree it may be problematic if uninstall demo removes everything the demo had installed as a) some pre-existent things (like operators) would be ignored on install but not on uninstall, and b) subsequent deployments may depend on demo components. I think an uninstall should at least make it possible run the install again, resulting in a clean setup. That may then require leaving some "demo install"-ed things untouched, if we feel that we may compromise users' environments. It depends a bit on who the target audience is - I tend to the opinion that "demo is demo" and is therefore unsuited to anything other than a test environment. I think whichever way we go, we can cover such scenarios with an explanatory note - e.g. "uninstall will do X, Y and Z: ensure your environment is appropriate for this!"

[fhennig]

I had some thoughts on this:

• uninstalling a demo
• option to delete PVCs or not
• option to delete operators or not (also CRDs)
• maybe an interactive process to let the user decide?

Closing my other ticket in favor of this one #186

[Maleware]

I went through some stacks and demos and figured out some issues:

I just realised that if we have a demo in a namespace and then throwing it away with k delete namespace there are some leftovers on the cluster in:

• ClusterRole
• ClusterRolebinding
• CSIdriver
• StorageClass

This stuff is preventing to throw away a namespace, create a new one and install another demo on it.

As a solution (having open shift in mind):

1. Every operator should be installed in his own ns (demos and stack in target ns (default or user given))
2. stackablectl should check weather or not the operators used by the demos are installed and skip the install if so

This will give the user the freedom to install a demo or stack in certain ns, throw it away and install the next demo. Additionally this gives us the capability to install various demos in different namespaces on one cluster.

I'm aware this feels like a stackablectl demo uninstall light, but by doing this we can avoid cleaning up each and every resource and just reuse them. Another thing solved by this, is that you currently can't kill a stack or demo by just simply delete the namespace it's in. As long as pvc's are attached to a pod, the secret operator is mandatory to kill those pods.

[Maleware]

On another note:

Since I'm testing the capabilities of stackablectl and the usage of stacks atm, I realised that we have monitoring and logging as stacks available. However, if you install any stack before you are not able to install any other stack besides that. I think since we have now meta features like logging and monitoring we should be able to install them via sctl easy and fast.

As far as I can see, another advantage of installing operators in their own ns is that we have this enabled out of the box too.

[soenkeliebau]

Is it new that we cannot install another stack beside an existing one?

I regularly installed the datalake demo and then afterwards did sctl s in logging and sctl s in monitoring to get those features as well.

[Maleware]

That's a good comment! Haven't found this in the documentation yet! But it looks like... it works :)

I think it is not working if you try installing it in another namespace as far as I can see

[soenkeliebau]

That might create issues, yes... the vector aggregator service for example would not resolve for the pods in a different namespace I think ..

[Maleware]

Yes, this in addition. However, you can not install another stack in a seperate namespace since sctl gives you an error like this:

[INFO ] Installing commons operator in version 23.1.0
panic: rendered manifests contain a resource that already exists. Unable to continue with install: ClusterRole "commons-operator-clusterrole" in namespace "" exists and cannot be imported into the current release: invalid ownership metadata; annotation validation error: key "meta.helm.sh/release-namespace" must equal "monitoring": current value is "data-lakehouse"

[soenkeliebau]

Ah, so the issue there is that it tries installing the release again .. might be useful to have a switch "--skip-release" to install just the stack and demo portions, for clusters that were pre-installed with a release.

[Maleware]

Ah! That's a way easier solution then I had in mind.

[Techassi]

Ah, so the issue there is that it tries installing the release again .. might be useful to have a switch "--skip-release" to install just the stack and demo portions, for clusters that were pre-installed with a release.

This will be possible when #79 is merged.