name: explain
synopsis: Documentation of resources.
description: |-
  Documentation of resources.

  Possible resource types include (case insensitive): pods (po), services (svc), deployments,
  replicasets (rs), replicationcontrollers (rc), nodes (no), events (ev), limitranges (limits),
  persistentvolumes (pv), persistentvolumeclaims (pvc), resourcequotas (quota), namespaces (ns),
  serviceaccounts (sa), ingresses (ing), horizontalpodautoscalers (hpa), daemonsets (ds), configmaps,
  componentstatuses (cs), endpoints (ep), and secrets.
options:
- name: include-extended-apis
  default_value: "true"
  usage: |
    If true, include definitions of new APIs via calls to the API server. [default true]
- name: recursive
  default_value: "false"
  usage: Print the fields of fields (Currently only 1 level deep)
inherited_options:
- name: alsologtostderr
  default_value: "false"
  usage: log to standard error as well as files
- name: api-version
  usage: |
    DEPRECATED: The API version to use when talking to the server
- name: as
  usage: Username to impersonate for the operation.
- name: certificate-authority
  usage: Path to a cert. file for the certificate authority.
- name: client-certificate
  usage: Path to a client certificate file for TLS.
- name: client-key
  usage: Path to a client key file for TLS.
- name: cluster
  usage: The name of the kubeconfig cluster to use
- name: context
  usage: The name of the kubeconfig context to use
- name: insecure-skip-tls-verify
  default_value: "false"
  usage: |
    If true, the server's certificate will not be checked for validity. This will make your HTTPS connections insecure.
- name: kubeconfig
  usage: Path to the kubeconfig file to use for CLI requests.
- name: log-backtrace-at
  default_value: :0
  usage: when logging hits line file:N, emit a stack trace
- name: log-dir
  usage: If non-empty, write log files in this directory
- name: log-flush-frequency
  default_value: 5s
  usage: Maximum number of seconds between log flushes
- name: logtostderr
  default_value: "true"
  usage: log to standard error instead of files
- name: match-server-version
  default_value: "false"
  usage: Require server version to match client version
- name: namespace
  usage: If present, the namespace scope for this CLI request.
- name: password
  usage: Password for basic authentication to the API server.
- name: server
  shorthand: s
  usage: The address and port of the Kubernetes API server
- name: stderrthreshold
  default_value: "2"
  usage: logs at or above this threshold go to stderr
- name: token
  usage: Bearer token for authentication to the API server.
- name: user
  usage: The name of the kubeconfig user to use
- name: username
  usage: Username for basic authentication to the API server.
- name: v
  default_value: "0"
  usage: log level for V logs
- name: vmodule
  usage: |
    comma-separated list of pattern=N settings for file-filtered logging
example: |-
  # Get the documentation of the resource and its fields
  kubectl explain pods

  # Get the documentation of a specific field of a resource
  kubectl explain pods.spec.containers
see_also:
- kubectl