Patching deployments via kubernetes/client-go

Having trouble figuring out what is wrong. I have a remote kubernetes cluster up and have copied the config locally. I know it is correct because I have gotten other commands to work for me.

The one I can't get to work is a deployment patch. My code:

const namespace = "default"
    
var clientset *kubernetes.Clientset

func init() {
    kubeconfig := "/Users/$USER/go/k8s-api/config"
    config, err := clientcmd.BuildConfigFromFlags("", kubeconfig)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }

    // create the clientset
    clientset, err = kubernetes.NewForConfig(config)
    if err != nil {
        panic(err.Error())
    }
}

func main() {
    deploymentsClient := clientset.ExtensionsV1beta1().Deployments("default")

    patch := []byte(`[{"spec":{"template":{"spec":{"containers":[{"name":"my-deploy-test","image":"$ORG/$REPO:my-deploy0.0.1"}]}}}}]`)
    res, err := deploymentsClient.Patch("my-deploy", types.JSONPatchType, patch)
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    fmt.Println(res)

}

All I get back is: panic: the server rejected our request due to an error in our request

Any help appreciated, thanks!

Actually you should use types.StrategicMergePatchType and remove leading ([) and trailing (]) brackets from patching string.

• Merge patch:

  With a JSON merge patch, if you want to update a list, you have to specify the entire new list. And the new list completely replaces the existing list.

  Source

• Strategic merge patch:

  With a strategic merge patch, a list is either replaced or merged depending on its patch strategy. The patch strategy is specified by the value of the patchStrategy key in a field tag in the Kubernetes source code. For example, the Containers field of PodSpec struct has a patchStrategy of merge:

  type PodSpec struct {
    ...
    Containers []Container `json:"containers" patchStrategy:"merge" patchMergeKey:"name" ...`
  

  Source

N.B. kubectl by default uses strategic merge patch to patch Kubernetes resources.