How does ArgoCD decide if an application should be updated or freshly installed?

[meysholdt]

Hi there!

We have a cluster in which we install the same application several times. let's call the application A. Example:

• in namespace foo, A is installed via ArgoCD.
• in namespace bar, A is installed kubectl apply.
• in namespace baz, A is installed kubectl apply.

When we now run argocd sync on foo.A, ArgoCD wants to overwrite sometimes bar.A and sometimes baz.A.

Im surprised this happens, because we specified namespace foo as destination in the application manifest of A in ArgoCD.

Is this expected behaviour or am I missing something?

Is it required to restrict foo.A to namespace foo via Cluster Manifest or Project manifest?

When argocd sync runs, what are the exact criteria to match k8s resources? I kinda expected it would be k8s-namespace and k8s-resourcename. But based on what we observed, the namespace does not seem to be applied for matching.

[hjorth]

https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.8/faq/#why-is-my-app-out-of-sync-even-after-syncing

Any chance it could be related to this?