Sync fails unless namespace and CRD's manually created

[SDBrett]

I'm new to ArgoCD and having trouble with my Application not synchronising.

Argo does not create the namespace used as the Application target when the create namespace option is selected.
Sync fails if the namespace and / or CRDs do not exist even though the are source manifests. Terminating and manually synchronising those items fixes the issue so I'm not sure why they are not created as part of sync.

Am I doing something wrong?

Application manifest using manifest to create namespace

project: default
source:
  repoURL: 'https://github.com/operator-framework/operator-lifecycle-manager'
  path: deploy/upstream/manifests/0.18.0
  targetRevision: v0.18.1
  directory:
    recurse: true
    jsonnet: {}
destination:
  server: 'https://kubernetes.default.svc'
syncPolicy:
  automated:
    selfHeal: true
  syncOptions:
    - Replace=true

I don't have any issues with Applications creating namespaces from manifests if that's all they create. I feel that there's a race condition where Argo attempts to create resources in an order that just doesn't work.

Is there a way to control the order which Argo attempts to apply objects?

[jannfis]

Hey @SDBrett, Argo CD applies a sensible order to resources it creates on the cluster from the manifests. The actual order is defined in GitOps Engine, as seen here.

As to your last question, it is possible to control the order of how resources are synced using sync waves. But Namespace are applied first and CustomResourceDefinitions are applied before most other resources.

What version of Argo CD are you using?

EDIT: I've just seen that there is no .spec.destination.namespace defined in your Application spec. So, auto namespace creation would become a little problematic with that.