Feast Operator fails when deployed to custom namespace - requires "feast-operator-system" to exist

[RSBhoomika]

Expected Behavior

The operator should function correctly regardless of which namespace it is deployed in. It should not require feast-operator-system to exist when running in a different namespace.

Current Behavior

The operator fails to fully reconcile FeatureStore CRs because it attempts to access resources in feast-operator-system, which doesn't exist when the operator is deployed elsewhere.

Steps to reproduce

1. Deploy the Feast Operator to a custom namespace instead of feast-operator-system
2. Verify the operator is running:
   kubectl get pods -n test

   feast-operator-controller-manager-xxx 1/1 Running

3. Create a FeatureStore CR in any namespace
4. Check the FeatureStore status:
   kubectl describe feast -n
5. Observe the failure:

Workaround

Creating an empty feast-operator-system namespace resolves the issue:

kubectl create namespace feast-operator-system.After this, FeatureStore CRs reconcile successfully and show Ready status.

Suggested Fix

The operator should dynamically determine its own namespace (using Kubernetes Downward API or ServiceAccount namespace) instead of assuming it runs in feast-operator-system.

Specifications

• Version: 0.54.0