FATAL an application with the same name and a different base already exists, consider choosing a different name

[hookenful]

Hi there!

I am trying to create the same app for different projects (environments)

argocd-autopilot application create frontend --app http://192.168.0.78:8080/root/machairodus-new/web/kustomize/envs/dev?ref=1.5 --project dev--dest-namespace dev

argocd-autopilot application create frontend --app http://192.168.0.78:8080/root/machairodus-new/web/kustomize/envs/test?ref=1.5 --project test --dest-namespace test

In result I have an error:

FATAL an application with the same name and a different base already exists, consider choosing a different name

How should I specify different kustomize manifests for different envs? Is there any working example to achieve that with argocd-autopilot

[neeraj-ec]

I think this happens when you have kustomization files in the same git repo which is used by argocd-autopilot. For example you created your app yaml files in $GIT_REPO/apps/sample-app/overlayes/dev. Here $GIT_REPO is same git repo you used for export GIT_REPO=https://....

I'm also struggling with the same issue. The documentation about this project poor and skips a lot of details and too hard to follow for new gitops user who does not have much knowledge about argocd.

@noam-codefresh Is it mandatory to keep your application yaml files somewhere else other than $GIT_REPO/apps/app1/overlays/project1. If yes I don't understand how it achieve gitops then? If I'm putting my yaml files in some other dir or git repo then how argocd will reconcile? Because it is watching $GIT_REPO/apps/app1/overlays/project1 directory for changes and any new deployment will make changes in yaml files which are at some other place.

---

My file structure is

.
├── apps/
│   └── app1/
│       ├── base/
│       │   ├── dep.yaml
│       │   ├── configs.yaml
│       │   ├── service.yaml
│       │   ├── ingress.yaml
│       │   └── kustomization.yaml
│       └── overlayes/
│           ├── dev/
│           │   └── kustomization.yaml
│           ├── prod/
│           │   └── kustomization.yaml
│           └── stage/
│               └── kustomization.yaml
├── bootstrap
└── projects

I create apps/app1 directory manually, commit to $GIT_REPO and then run the command
argocd-autopilot app create app1 --app $GIT_REPO/apps/app1/overlays/dev/ --project dev --type kustomize --wait-timeout 2m

And I get the error.

FATAL an application with the same name and a different base already exists, consider choosing a different name

@noam-codefresh @danielm-codefresh Can somebody please help me understand whats I'm doing wrong?

[neeraj-ec]

Found a solution. if you create a file apps/app1/overlays/dev/config.json with content like

{
    "appName": "app1",
    "userGivenName": "app1",
    "destNamespace": "test",
    "destServer": "https://kubernetes.default.svc",
    "srcPath": "apps/app1/overlays/dev",
    "srcRepoURL": "https://github.com/example/example.git",
    "srcTargetRevision": "",
    "labels": null,
    "annotations": null
  }

it will automatically create the app. You don't even need to run argocd-autopilot app create ... command. srcRepoURL is the url of your $GIT_REPO.

Basically this is dictated by the ApplicationSet created when you create a project. You can look at projects/project1.yaml file which determines which path it monitor to look for config.json and config_dir.json. These are part of Git Generators

I understood the usage of config.json. But still does not know how config_dir.json is used and when should I create config_dir.json over config.json + what benefits it provides + what should be the content in config_dir.json.
If someone from codefresh team can shed a some light on it.

[hookenful]

@neeraj-ec I think u just need to keep your base app manifests outside gitops repository (e.g in app repository), but after u argocd-autopilot app create ..., you can manually add overlay where u specify params, especially image and etc.. So after that, u can modify that image section in gitops repository and argocd will reconcile.

@noam-codefresh am I right with that?

[neeraj-ec]

@neeraj-ec I think u just need to keep your base app manifests outside gitops repository (e.g in app repository), but after u argocd-autopilot app create ..., you can manually add overlay where u specify params, especially image and etc.. So after that, u can modify that image section in gitops repository and argocd will reconcile.

@noam-codefresh am I right with that?

That is one way of doing it. But I want to keep all my manifests files in a single infra repository. Managing whole k8s cluster from single repo. In that case, #470 (comment) works fine.