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What is GitOps? What are the core principles of GitOps? How does ArgoCD implement GitOps? What is the difference between push-based and pull-based deployment? What is a source of truth and why does GitOps use Git for it? What is continuous reconciliation? What tools implement GitOps besides ArgoCD? What is idempotency and why does it matter in GitOps? What is configuration drift and how does GitOps handle it? What are the benefits of GitOps over traditional deployment approaches?
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What is declarative vs imperative configuration?

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Answer

Declarative configuration states the desired end state ('there should be 3 replicas') and lets the system converge to it; imperative issues step-by-step commands ('scale to 3 now'). GitOps is declarative: you commit the desired state and the agent makes it so, which is idempotent, reproducible, and self-correcting versus one-off imperative commands.
# Declarative desired state
spec:
  replicas: 3
# vs imperative: kubectl scale deploy/app --replicas=3
Real-world example The repo declares 3 replicas; whether the cluster had 1 or 5, ArgoCD converges it to 3.

Common follow-ups: Why is declarative idempotent? | How does this enable self-healing?

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