Create utils to make it easier to work with custom types

[robscott]

What would you like to be added:
Helper funcs that help with type conversion, especially from and to pointers, for our custom types. Examples of these types include Hostname, Namespace, and Group.

Why this is needed:
To simplify CRD validation, we've created a lot of custom types. Unfortunately this makes it difficult to work with our APIs with go. It would be very helpful if we had some utils that made this easier to work with. Otherwise each implementation will likely end up implementing their own set of these.

[hbagdi]

Want to make sure I understand you right. Are you referring to something like?

func NamespacePtr(ns string) *gwapi.Namespace
func Namespace(ns string) gwapi.Namespace

[robscott]

@hbagdi yep, thanks for adding the examples!

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/lifecycle stale

[skriss]

👍, see https://github.com/projectcontour/contour/blob/main/internal/gatewayapi/helpers.go for some examples of what we've needed for the Contour implementation. Would love to see these upstreamed.

[robscott]

That's a great set of helpers! I think I've seen similar helpers in at least the Istio code base, @howardjohn is there much overlap here? Agree that it would be great to move any broadly shared code into Gateway.

/remove-lifecycle stale

[k8s-triage-robot]

The Kubernetes project currently lacks enough contributors to adequately respond to all issues and PRs.

This bot triages issues and PRs according to the following rules:

• After 90d of inactivity, lifecycle/stale is applied
• After 30d of inactivity since lifecycle/stale was applied, lifecycle/rotten is applied
• After 30d of inactivity since lifecycle/rotten was applied, the issue is closed

You can:

• Mark this issue or PR as fresh with /remove-lifecycle stale
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• Close this issue or PR with /close
• Offer to help out with Issue Triage

Please send feedback to sig-contributor-experience at kubernetes/community.

/lifecycle stale

[youngnick]

/remove-lifecycle stale

ping @howardjohn, what do you think about upstreaming some helpers like the Contour ones above?

[bowei]

/good-first-issue