Generating a set of concrete API objects to reconcile with the apiserver via kubecfg/kubectl could be expressed as a series of (parameterized) build-like transformation steps.

For instance, one could translate from templated YAML to untemplated YAML to JSON (the last step would be required if we stopped supporting YAML in apiserver - #1004). Users should be able to use whatever templating systems they like, such as Mustache or Jinja. It should even be possible to use a different language for each configuration file, which would facilitate sharing of templates.

More complete macro generation/expansion could also occur this way, as discussed in #1007, taking in JSON or YAML for the macro and emitting multiple API objects (or even other macro objects). For instance, kubecfg's run operation (which is not present in the new version; see #1325) could be handled this way (filing separate issue).

There are a few other domain-specific transformations that would be useful (e.g., image name/tag resolution, name+label+selector scoping, and reference generation), for which I'll also file other issues.

The final concrete objects could then be checked into a version control branch and deployed using kubectl and/or a workflow or script wrapped around it.