helmfile

Deploy Kubernetes Helm Charts

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, helm must be installed.

The default helmfile is charts.yaml:

repositories:
  - name: roboll
    url: http://roboll.io/charts

context: kube-context					 # kube-context (--kube-context)

charts:
  # Published chart example
  - name: vault                            # helm deployment name
    namespace: vault                       # target namespace
    chart: roboll/vault-secret-manager     # chart reference (repository)
    values: [ vault.yaml ]                 # value files (--values)
    set:                                   # values (--set)
      - name: address
        value: https://vault.example.com
      - name: db.password
        value: {{ env "DB_PASSWORD" }}                   # value taken from environment variable. Will throw an error if the environment variable is not set. $DB_PASSWORD needs to be set in the calling environment ex: export DB_PASSWORD='password1'
      - name: proxy.domain
        value: "{{ env \"PLATFORM_ID\" }}.my-domain.com" # Interpolate environment variable with a fixed string

  # Local chart example
  - name: grafana                            # helm deployment name
    namespace: another                       # target namespace
    chart: ../my-charts/grafana              # chart reference (relative path to manifest)
    values:
    - "../../my-values/grafana/values.yaml"             # Values file (relative path to manifest)
    - "./values/{{ env \"PLATFORM_ENV\" }}/config.yaml" # Values file taken from path with environment variable. $PLATFORM_ENV must be set in the calling environment.

install

go get github.com/roboll/helmfile or releases or container

usage

NAME:
   helmfile -

USAGE:
   main [global options] command [command options] [arguments...]

COMMANDS:
     repos   sync repositories from state file (helm repo add && helm repo update)
     charts  sync charts from state file (helm repo upgrade --install)
     diff    diff charts from state file against env (helm diff)
     sync    sync all resources from state file (repos && charts)
     delete  delete charts from state file (helm delete)

GLOBAL OPTIONS:
   --file FILE, -f FILE  load config from FILE (default: "charts.yaml")
   --quiet, -q           silence output
   --kube-context value  Set kubectl context. Uses current context by default
   --help, -h            show help
   --version, -v         print the version

diff

The helmfile diff sub-command executes the helm-diff plugin across all of the charts/releases defined in the manifest.

Under the covers Helmfile is simply using the helm diff plugin, so that needs to be installed prior. For Helm 2.3+ you should be able to simply execute helm plugin install https://github.com/databus23/helm-diff. For more details please look at their documentation.

Paths Overview

Using manifest files in conjunction with command line argument can be a bit confusing.

A few rules to clear up this ambiguity:

• Absolute paths are always resolved as absolute paths
• Relative paths referenced in the helmfile manifest itself are relative to that manifest
• Relative paths referenced on the command line are relative to the current working directory the user is in

For additional context, take a look at paths examples