Multiple deployments using one helm chart and chart dependencies with alias - kubernetes

Question

I have 10 Deployments that are currently managed by 10 unique helm releases.
But these deployments are so similar that I wish to group them together and manage it as one helm release.
All deployments use the same helm chart, the only difference is in the environment variables passed to the deployment pod which is set in values.yaml.
Can I do this using helm chart dependencies and the alias field?
dependencies:
- name: subchart
repository: http://localhost:10191
version: 0.1.0
alias: deploy-1
- name: subchart
repository: http://localhost:10191
version: 0.1.0
alias: deploy-2
- name: subchart
repository: http://localhost:10191
version: 0.1.0
alias: deploy-3
I can now set values for individual deploys in one parent Chart's values.yaml:
deploy-1:
environment:
key: value-1
deploy-2:
environment:
key: value-2
deploy-3:
environment:
key: value-3
But 99% of the values that I need to set for all the deployments are the same.
How do I avoid duplicating them across the deploy-n keys in the parent chart's values.yaml file?

Answer 1

If you have 10 deployments that are similar, but have only a few differences in environment variables, you can group them together and manage them as one helm release using a single values.yaml file. Here's how you can achieve this:
Define a single dependency in your parent chart's Chart.yaml file that points to the helm chart for your deployments:
dependencies:
- name: my-deployments
version: 1.0.0
repository: https://charts.example.com
Create a single values.yaml file in your parent chart's templates directory that defines the values for your deployments:
my-deployments:
environment:
key1: value1
key2: value2
key3: value3
In your deployment manifests, replace any environment variable values that vary between deployments with references to the values in the parent chart's values.yaml file:
env:
- name: ENV_VAR_1
value: {{ .Values.my-deployments.environment.key1 }}
- name: ENV_VAR_2
value: {{ .Values.my-deployments.environment.key2 }}
- name: ENV_VAR_3
value: {{ .Values.my-deployments.environment.key3 }}
This way, you only need to define the environment variable values that vary between deployments in the parent chart's values.yaml file, and Helm will automatically apply these values to all the deployments.
Note that this approach assumes that all of your deployments use the same Helm chart with the same structure for their deployment manifests. If this is not the case, you may need to adjust the approach accordingly to fit the specific needs of your deployments.