How to parameterize image version when passing yaml for container creation

After looking into this recently we decided to just go with sed. Wrap kubectl apply into a small bash script and replace the placeholders before running apply.

We did look into more sophisticated tooling but we only found Helm. However Helm is a complex piece of technology that does way more than just templating. It changes your workflow a lot as you no longer deploy using kubectl and have to have a Helm package repo around to push your packages to. Our assessment was that Helm is not useful for deploying our application and using it for just the templating is overkill.

k8s manifest files are static yaml/json.

If you would like to template the manifests (and manage multiple resources in a bundle-like fashion), I strongly recommend you to have a look at Helm

I've recently created a Workshop which focuses precisely on the "Templating" features of Helm.

Helm does a lot more than just templating, it is built as a full fledged package manager for Kubernetes applications (think Apt/Yum/Homebrew).

If you want to handle everything client side, have a look at https://github.com/errordeveloper/kubegen

Although, at some point, you will need the other features of Helm and a migration will be needed when that time comes - I recommend biting the bullet and going for Helm straight up.