Declaratively deploy your Kubernetes manifests, Kustomize configs, and Charts as Helm releases in one shot
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Aditya Menon 637dbdf426
fix: make AWS SDK debug logging configurable (issue #2270)
This PR fixes issue #2270 where AWS SDK debug logs expose sensitive
credentials in helmfile output, by adding flexible, configurable AWS SDK
logging with secure defaults.

Problem:
--------
Despite PR #2288's fix, AWS SDK debug logs still appeared in helmfile
output, exposing sensitive information:
- AWS tokens and authorization headers
- Request/response bodies containing credentials
- Secret metadata from vals providers

Root Cause:
-----------
1. PR #2288 only suppressed vals' own logging via LogOutput: io.Discard
2. AWS SDK v2 uses separate logging (AWS_SDK_GO_LOG_LEVEL, WithClientLogMode)
3. Vals library defaulted to verbose logging (aws.LogRetries | aws.LogRequest)
4. No programmatic way to control AWS SDK logging

Solution:
---------
Two-part fix in conjunction with vals PR #893:

1. Vals library enhancement (helmfile/vals#893):
   - Added Options.AWSLogLevel field for programmatic control
   - Changed default from verbose to secure (no logging)
   - Added preset levels: off, minimal, standard, verbose
   - Maintains AWS_SDK_GO_LOG_LEVEL precedence

2. Helmfile changes (this PR):
   - Added HELMFILE_AWS_SDK_LOG_LEVEL environment variable
   - Enhanced vals configuration to use new AWSLogLevel field
   - Added conditional AWS SDK log suppression in remote.go (3 locations)
   - Comprehensive unit tests (15 test cases)

Configuration:
--------------
Preset levels via HELMFILE_AWS_SDK_LOG_LEVEL:
- "off" (default) - No logging, secure, prevents credential leakage
- "minimal" - Log retries only
- "standard" - Log retries + requests (previous default behavior)
- "verbose" - Log everything (requests, responses, bodies, signing)
- Custom - Comma-separated values (e.g., "request,response")

Priority order:
1. AWS_SDK_GO_LOG_LEVEL env var (highest)
2. HELMFILE_AWS_SDK_LOG_LEVEL env var
3. Secure default ("off")

Testing:
--------
Added comprehensive unit tests:
- pkg/plugins/vals_test.go: 9 test cases
  * TestAWSSDKLogLevelConfiguration - all preset levels
  * TestEnvironmentVariableReading - env var parsing
- pkg/remote/remote_test.go: 6 test cases
  * TestAWSSDKLogLevelInit - init() logic

All tests passing:
- pkg/plugins: PASS (3/3 test suites)
- pkg/remote: PASS (all test suites)
- golangci-lint: 0 issues

Files changed: 7 files, 271 insertions(+), 31 deletions(-)

Security:
---------
Before: Credentials exposed by default (aws.LogRetries | aws.LogRequest)
After: Credentials protected by default (no logging unless explicitly enabled)

Follows security principles:
- Secure by default
- Principle of least privilege
- Explicit opt-in for sensitive logging
- Defense in depth

Dependency:
-----------
Depends on: helmfile/vals#893
Currently using: aditmeno/vals@a97336ce2b (via go.mod replace)
After vals PR merges: Update to official release

Fixes: #2270
Related: #2288, #2289, helmfile/vals#893
Signed-off-by: Aditya Menon <amenon@canarytechnologies.com>
2025-11-24 03:45:06 +01:00
.github build(deps): bump actions/checkout from 5 to 6 (#2287) 2025-11-22 08:26:33 +08:00
cmd feat: add Helm 4 support while maintaining Helm 3 compatibility (#2262) 2025-11-19 07:49:30 +08:00
docs feat: add Helm 4 support while maintaining Helm 3 compatibility (#2262) 2025-11-19 07:49:30 +08:00
examples feat: add Helm 4 support while maintaining Helm 3 compatibility (#2262) 2025-11-19 07:49:30 +08:00
hack release: fix hack/semtag when there are one or more git remotes before `origin` 2019-01-22 01:29:28 +09:00
logo Add logo as .png and .ai (Adobe Illustrator) files (#263) 2022-08-24 07:37:52 +09:00
pkg fix: make AWS SDK debug logging configurable (issue #2270) 2025-11-24 03:45:06 +01:00
test Fix four critical bugs: array merging (#2281), AWS SDK logging (#2270), helmDefaults skip flags (#2269), and OCI chart versions (#2247) (#2288) 2025-11-22 09:27:51 +08:00
.dockerignore rework dockerfiles (#519) 2022-11-25 10:14:27 +09:00
.editorconfig Improve capitalization and formats of README.md. (#1545) 2020-10-19 08:47:19 +09:00
.gitignore feat: add duration to failed releases summary (#1066) 2023-10-12 18:49:07 -05:00
.golangci.yaml refactor(filesystem): add CopyDir method and optimize Fetch function (#2111) 2025-07-28 16:10:25 -04:00
.goreleaser.yml feat: add helmfile archive configuration in goreleaser (#2000) 2025-04-19 12:11:39 +08:00
.readthedocs.yaml update python3 version for mkdoc.yaml (#1712) 2024-09-18 07:11:12 +08:00
CODEOWNERS add zhaque44 in CODEOWNERS (#1711) 2024-09-17 12:23:21 +08:00
CONTRIBUTING.md Misc documentation fixes (#1442) 2024-04-06 07:17:32 +08:00
Dockerfile 🐛 Fix four critical issues: environment merging, kubeVersion detection, lookup() with kustomize, and Helm 4 color flags (#2276) 2025-11-21 08:32:54 +08:00
Dockerfile.debian-stable-slim 🐛 Fix four critical issues: environment merging, kubeVersion detection, lookup() with kustomize, and Helm 4 color flags (#2276) 2025-11-21 08:32:54 +08:00
Dockerfile.ubuntu 🐛 Fix four critical issues: environment merging, kubeVersion detection, lookup() with kustomize, and Helm 4 color flags (#2276) 2025-11-21 08:32:54 +08:00
LICENSE Create LICENSE 2017-11-10 16:07:38 -05:00
Makefile feat: add Helm 4 support while maintaining Helm 3 compatibility (#2262) 2025-11-19 07:49:30 +08:00
README-zh_CN.md docs: add zread badge to README (#2219) 2025-10-13 14:10:00 +08:00
README.md docs: add zread badge to README (#2219) 2025-10-13 14:10:00 +08:00
SECURITY.md Create SECURITY.md (#135) 2022-06-05 17:11:54 +09:00
USERS.md Add RightCapital to USERS.md (#1676) 2024-08-24 05:14:38 +08:00
go.mod fix: make AWS SDK debug logging configurable (issue #2270) 2025-11-24 03:45:06 +01:00
go.sum fix: make AWS SDK debug logging configurable (issue #2270) 2025-11-24 03:45:06 +01:00
main.go Make helmfile respect signals send by kill command (not only Ctrl+C in terminal) (#750) 2023-04-29 15:25:29 +09:00
mkdocs.yml v1: Document experimental features (#1512) 2024-05-09 10:18:29 +08:00

README.md

Helmfile

Tests Container Image Repository on GHCR Go Report Card Slack Community #helmfile Documentation Gurubase zread

Deploy Kubernetes Helm Charts

English | 简体中文

About

Helmfile is a declarative spec for deploying helm charts. It lets you...

  • Keep a directory of chart value files and maintain changes in version control.
  • Apply CI/CD to configuration changes.
  • Periodically sync to avoid skew in environments.

To avoid upgrades for each iteration of helm, the helmfile executable delegates to helm - as a result, the following must be installed

Highlights

Declarative: Write, version-control, apply the desired state file for visibility and reproducibility.

Modules: Modularize common patterns of your infrastructure, distribute it via Git, S3, etc. to be reused across the entire company (See #648)

Versatility: Manage your cluster consisting of charts, kustomizations, and directories of Kubernetes resources, turning everything to Helm releases (See #673)

Patch: JSON/Strategic-Merge Patch Kubernetes resources before helm-installing, without forking upstream charts (See #673)

Status

May 2025 Update

  • Helmfile v1.0 and v1.1 has been released. We recommend upgrading directly to v1.1 if you are still using v0.x.
  • If you haven't already upgraded, please go over this v1 proposal here to see a small list of breaking changes.

Installation

1: Binary Installation

download one of releases

2: Package Manager

  • Archlinux: install via pacman -S helmfile
  • openSUSE: install via zypper in helmfile assuming you are on Tumbleweed; if you are on Leap you must add the kubic repo for your distribution version once before that command, e.g. zypper ar https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/kubic/openSUSE_Leap_\$releasever kubic
  • Windows (using scoop): scoop install helmfile
  • macOS (using homebrew): brew install helmfile

3: Container

For more details, see run as a container

Make sure to run helmfile init once after installation. Helmfile uses the helm-diff plugin.

Getting Started

Let's start with a simple helmfile and gradually improve it to fit your use-case!

Suppose the helmfile.yaml representing the desired state of your helm releases looks like:

repositories:
- name: prometheus-community
  url: https://prometheus-community.github.io/helm-charts

releases:
- name: prom-norbac-ubuntu
  namespace: prometheus
  chart: prometheus-community/prometheus
  set:
  - name: rbac.create
    value: false

Sync your Kubernetes cluster state to the desired one by running:

helmfile apply

Congratulations! You now have your first Prometheus deployment running inside your cluster.

Iterate on the helmfile.yaml by referencing:

More complex examples

See: multi-env-helmfile

Docs

Please read complete documentation

Contributing

Welcome to contribute together to make helmfile better: contributing doc

Attribution

We use:

  • semtag for automated semver tagging. I greatly appreciate the author(pnikosis)'s effort on creating it and their kindness to share it!

Users

Helmfile has been used by many users in production:

For more users, please see: Users

License

MIT

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