minecraft-gateway

Caution

This project is in very early alpha. APIs, CRDs, and behavior will change without notice. Do not use in production.

Note

Full documentation is/will be available here.

A Kubernetes-native gateway controller that creates minecraft networks and routes Minecraft Java Edition connections to networks based on the hostname in the handshake packet.

Install

kubectl apply --server-side -f https://github.com/minefleet/minecraft-gateway/releases/download/<tag>/install.yaml

For example, to install the latest release:

kubectl apply --server-side -f https://github.com/minefleet/minecraft-gateway/releases/latest/download/install.yaml

Description

minecraft-gateway implements the Kubernetes Gateway API for Minecraft TCP traffic. It consists of three components:

• a Go controller that reconciles custom (MinecraftJoinRoute, MinecraftFallbackRoute, MinecraftServerDiscovery) and Gateway API CRDs and synchronizes routing state
• an Envoy Edge Dataplane that parses Minecraft Java Edition handshake packets and selects the correct upstream cluster via Envoy filter chain metadata. This allows a single entry point per kubernetes node to transparently proxy players to different minecraft networks based on the hostname they connected with.
• a per Gateway Velocity Dataplane that constructs a minecraft network based on the routing state.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• go version v1.25.0+
• docker version 17.03+.
• kubectl version v1.11.3+.
• Access to a Kubernetes v1.11.3+ cluster.

To Deploy on the cluster

Build and push your controller and edge to the location specified by CONTROLLER_IMG and EDGE_IMG:

CONTROLLER_IMG=<some-registry>/minecraft-gateway:tag EDGE_IMG=<some-registry>/minecraft-edge:tag make docker-build docker-push

NOTE: The images ought to be published in the personal registry you specified. And it is required to have access to pull the image from the working environment. Make sure you have the proper permission to the registry if the above commands don’t work.

Install the CRDs into the cluster:

make install

Deploy the Manager to the cluster with the image specified by IMG:

CONTROLLER_IMG=<some-registry>/minecraft-gateway:tag EDGE_IMG=<some-registry>/minecraft-edge:tag make deploy

NOTE: If you encounter RBAC errors, you may need to grant yourself cluster-admin privileges or be logged in as admin.

Create instances of your solution You can apply the samples (examples) from the config/sample:

kubectl apply -k config/samples/

NOTE: Ensure that the samples has default values to test it out.

To Uninstall

Delete the instances (CRs) from the cluster:

kubectl delete -k config/samples/

Delete the APIs(CRDs) from the cluster:

make uninstall

UnDeploy the controller from the cluster:

make undeploy

Project Distribution

Following the options to release and provide this solution to the users.

By providing a bundle with all YAML files

1. Build the installer for the image built and published in the registry:

make build-installer IMG=<some-registry>/minecraft-gateway:tag

NOTE: The makefile target mentioned above generates an 'install.yaml' file in the dist directory. This file contains all the resources built with Kustomize, which are necessary to install this project without its dependencies.

2. Using the installer

Users can just run 'kubectl apply -f ' to install the project, i.e.:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/minefleet/minecraft-gateway/<tag or branch>/dist/install.yaml

By providing a Helm Chart

1. Build the chart using the optional helm plugin

kubebuilder edit --plugins=helm/v1-alpha

2. See that a chart was generated under 'dist/chart', and users can obtain this solution from there.

NOTE: If you change the project, you need to update the Helm Chart using the same command above to sync the latest changes. Furthermore, if you create webhooks, you need to use the above command with the '--force' flag and manually ensure that any custom configuration previously added to 'dist/chart/values.yaml' or 'dist/chart/manager/manager.yaml' is manually re-applied afterwards.

Contributing

Open an issue or pull request on GitHub. Please run make fmt, make vet, and make lint before submitting. After editing types in api/v1/, regenerate code with make manifests generate.

NOTE: Run make help for more information on all potential make targets

More information can be found via the Kubebuilder Documentation

License

Copyright 2025.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.