Declaratively deploy your Kubernetes manifests, Kustomize configs, and Charts as Helm releases in one shot
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Shane Starcher 6673ebad84
fix: skip chartify for build command jsonPatches (#2212)
The build command is intended to be a read-only inspection command that
outputs the helmfile state. However, when releases use jsonPatches,
strategicMergePatches, or transformers, the chart preparation step
triggers chartify, which runs helm template and requires dependencies to
be built.

This causes two issues:
1. helm template is executed unnecessarily for a simple state inspection
2. Missing chart dependencies cause errors even with SkipDeps enabled

This change modifies PrepareCharts to filter out releases that require
chartify when the command is "build". These releases are excluded from
chart preparation, preventing helm template from being invoked.

The state output will still include these releases, but their charts
won't be processed during the build operation.

Signed-off-by: Shane Starcher <shanestarcher@gmail.com>
2025-10-05 07:39:54 +08:00
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pkg fix: skip chartify for build command jsonPatches (#2212) 2025-10-05 07:39:54 +08:00
test feat: Implement caching for pulling OCI charts (#2171) 2025-09-13 12:49:03 +08:00
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README.md

Helmfile

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

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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