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

charts:
  - name: vault                          # helm deployment name
    namespace: vault                     # target namespace
    chart: roboll/vault-secret-manager   # chart reference
    values: [ vault.yaml ]               # value files (--values)
    set:                                 # values (--set)
      - name: address
        value: https://vault.example.com
    env:                                 # values (--set) but value will be pulled from environment variables. Will throw an error if the environment variable is not set.
      - name: db.password
        value: DB_PASSWORD               # $DB_PASSOWRD needs to be set in the calling environment ex: export DB_PASSWORD='password1'

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.