There seems to be some confusion here, in no small part due to the title of this article. But... > kustomize lets you customize raw, template-free YAML files f

There seems to be some confusion here, in no small part due to the title of this article. But... > kustomize lets you customize raw, template-free YAML files for multiple purposes, leaving the original YAML untouched and usable as is. That's the very first line of Kustomize's README[1]. Kustomize is not a templating DSL. The conversations here mocking templating DSLs are not relevant. The next sentence[1]: > kustomize targets kubernetes; it understands and can patch kubernetes style API objects. It's like make, in that what it does is declared in a file, and it's like sed, in that it emits editted text. Kustomize is a patching framework. It takes valid k8s resources, and allows you patch them, with partial k8s resources. The entire point of Kustomize to not invent something new. [1] https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kustomize https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kustomize