ArgoCD

Critical Gotchas

Sync Behavior

• selfHeal: true reverts manual cluster changes every 3 minutes (default)
• prune: true deletes resources removed from Git—enable only when certain
• replace: true in syncOptions does full replacement instead of patch (destructive)
• ServerSideApply=true required for CRDs with large specs to avoid annotation size limits

Application Targeting

• destination.server must match exactly what's registered in ArgoCD (check argocd cluster list)
• Use https://kubernetes.default.svc for in-cluster, not kubernetes.default
• destination.namespace doesn't auto-create unless CreateNamespace=true in syncOptions

Health Assessment

• ArgoCD has built-in health checks for standard resources
• Custom resources show "Progressing" indefinitely without custom health check in argocd-cm
• Ingress health requires actual endpoint check, not just resource existence