ArgoCD App Config Generator

An ArgoCD Application is a Custom Resource Definition (CRD) that tells ArgoCD where to find your Kubernetes manifests (a Git repo or Helm chart) and where to deploy them (a cluster + namespace). It's the core unit of GitOps in ArgoCD — each Application tracks one source and one destination, reconciling continuously so the cluster always matches your Git state.

With manual sync, ArgoCD detects drift between your Git source and cluster state but does nothing until you click 'Sync' in the UI or run 'argocd app sync'. With automated sync, ArgoCD automatically applies changes whenever it detects a new commit or config drift. Automated sync is ideal for CD pipelines, while manual sync is preferred when you want human approval before applying changes to production.

Self-heal makes ArgoCD automatically revert manual changes made directly to the cluster (e.g., someone ran 'kubectl edit deployment' in prod). Without self-heal, automated sync only triggers on new Git commits — drift from manual edits goes uncorrected. Enable self-heal in production environments where you want Git to be the absolute source of truth and prevent configuration drift caused by ad-hoc changes.

Prune tells ArgoCD to delete Kubernetes resources that exist in the cluster but are no longer in the Git repository. This is powerful but dangerous — if you accidentally delete a manifest from Git, ArgoCD will delete the live resource immediately. It's recommended to enable prune only after thorough testing, and consider pairing it with the 'PrunePropagationPolicy=foreground' sync option so dependent resources are deleted in the correct order.

Sync waves let you control the order in which resources are applied during a sync. Add the annotation 'argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "N"' to your Kubernetes manifests. Resources with lower wave numbers are applied first. ArgoCD waits for all resources in one wave to become healthy before moving to the next. Use waves to ensure CRDs are applied before custom resources, or databases before applications.

App of Apps is a pattern where a single ArgoCD Application points to a Git directory containing other ArgoCD Application manifests. The root app bootstraps all child apps, giving you a single entry point to manage your entire cluster's GitOps state. It's the recommended approach for multi-service environments — commit a new Application YAML to Git and ArgoCD automatically discovers and deploys it without any manual argocd CLI commands.