Declaratively deploy your Kubernetes manifests, Kustomize configs, and Charts as Helm releases in one shot
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yxxhero c6e7249eb9
feat: add helm-legacy track mode for Helm v4 compatibility (#2466)
Add support for trackMode: helm-legacy to use Helm v4's --wait=legacy flag,
which maintains compatibility with Helm v3's wait behavior during migration.

Helm v4 changed the default --wait behavior from polling to a watcher-based
approach. This can cause issues with charts that have broken livenessProbe
configurations without startupProbe. The --wait=legacy flag preserves the
Helm v3 polling behavior for smoother migration.

Changes:
- Add TrackModeHelmLegacy constant in pkg/kubedog/options.go
- Use kubedog.TrackMode constants instead of raw strings in helmx.go
- Enhance appendWaitFlags to use --wait=legacy for Helm v4 when trackMode
  is helm-legacy
- Add nil check for logger before logging warning
- Add version check with warning when helm-legacy is used with Helm v3
- Update validation in pkg/config to accept helm-legacy track mode
- Update command-line flags in cmd/apply.go and cmd/sync.go
- Add comprehensive documentation in docs/advanced-features.md
- Add thorough test coverage including warning message verification

Behavior:
- Helm v4 + helm-legacy: Uses --wait=legacy
- Helm v3 + helm-legacy: Falls back to --wait with warning
- Helm v4 + helm: Uses --wait (watcher mode)
- Any + kubedog: Skips --wait flag

Fixes #2464

Signed-off-by: yxxhero <aiopsclub@163.com>
Co-authored-by: Copilot <copilot@github.com>
2026-03-08 11:51:14 +08:00
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cmd feat: add helm-legacy track mode for Helm v4 compatibility (#2466) 2026-03-08 11:51:14 +08:00
docs feat: add helm-legacy track mode for Helm v4 compatibility (#2466) 2026-03-08 11:51:14 +08:00
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pkg feat: add helm-legacy track mode for Helm v4 compatibility (#2466) 2026-03-08 11:51:14 +08:00
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README.md

Helmfile

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

Deploy Kubernetes Helm Charts

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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
  • Linux/macOS/Windows (using mise): mise use -g helmfile@latest

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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