How to render only selected template in Helm? - kubernetes-helm

I have ~20 yamls in my helm chart + tons of dependencies and I want to check the rendered output of the specific one. helm template renders all yamls and produces a hundred lines of code. Is there a way (it would be nice to have even a regex) to render only selected template (by a file or eg. a name).

From helm template documentation
-s, --show-only stringArray only show manifests rendered from the given templates
For rendering only one resource use helm template -s templates/deployment.yaml .

If you have multiple charts in one directory:
|helm-charts
|-chart1
|--templates
|---deployment.yaml
|--values.yaml
|--Chart.yaml
|...
|- chart2
If you want to generate only one file e.g. chart1/deployment.yaml using values from file chart1/values.yaml follow these steps:
Enter to the chart folder:
cd chart1
Run this command:
helm template . --values values.yaml -s templates/deployment.yaml --name-template myReleaseName > chart1-deployment.yaml
Generated manifest will be inside file chart1-deployment.yaml.

Related

Helm template - Overriding values file

I am currently trying to test some changes, specifically to see if a chart picks up/inherits changes from a top level values file. This top level values file should override any settings in the values file for this chart. To test this, I am trying to use the following command:
helm template --values path/to/top/level/values.yaml path/to/chart > output.yaml
However, when viewing the output for this, the chart still retains the values defined in the chart, and not the values that have been set in the top level values file.
I have tried a number of variations of this command, such as:
helm template path/to/chart --values path/to/top/level/values.yaml > output.yaml
helm template -f path/to/chart/values.yaml --values path/to/top/level/values.yaml > output.yaml
helm template path/to/top/level/values.yaml --values path/to/chart > output.yaml
Am I using this command correctly? Is what I am trying to achieve only possible when doing a helm install or upgrade? e.g. https://all.docs.genesys.com/PrivateEdition/Current/PEGuide/HelmOverrides
Overriding values from a parent (you call it top-level) chart mychart works like a charm and exactly as described in the Helm docs.
A values.yaml in folder mychart/charts/mysubchart
dessert: cake
can be overriden by a values.yaml in folder mychart
mysubchart:
dessert: ice cream
Any directives inside of the mysubchart section will be sent to the mysubchart chart.
Rendering the parent (top-level) chart works like that:
helm template mychart -f mychart/values.yaml
What if what you want is to combine from 2 yaml files, is it possible?
Example:
values.yaml:
blackBoxSidecar:
enabled: true
targets:
- target: esb:443
module: tcp_connect
values-namespace.yaml:
blackBoxSidecar:
targets:
- target: rabbitmq-namespace:443
module: tcp_connect
What I want to get is:
blackBoxSidecar:
enabled: true
targets:
- target: esb:443
module: tcp_connect
- target: rabbitmq-namespace:443
module: tcp_connect

Helmchart values yaml override with helmfile

I try to my custom chart's values.yaml change with overridevalue.yaml to override values. However when I install the chart with helm repo add command and try to reach values yaml it throws me "values.yaml does not exist in ".".
Helm automatically uses values.yaml file from chart's root directory.
you can pass additional values or override existing ones by passing the file during installation:
$ helm install -f override_values.yaml app ./app
you can pass multiple -f <values_yaml> .. ... The priority will be given to the last (right-most) file specified for overriding existing values.

Use different name of the kustomization.yaml

For CI/CD purposes, the project is maintaining 2 kustomization.yaml files
Regular deployments - kustomization_deploy.yaml
Rollback deployment - kustomization_rollback.yaml
To run kustomize build, a file with the name "kustomization.yaml" is required in the current directory.
If the project wants to use kustomization_rollback.yaml and NOT kustomization.yaml, how is this possible? Does kustomize accept file name as an argument? Docs do not specify anything on this.
Currently there is no possibility to change the behavior of kustomize to support other file names (by using precompiled binaries) than:
kustomization.yaml
kustomization.yml
Kustomization
All of the below cases will produce the same error output:
kubectl kustomize dir/
kubectl apply -k dir/
kustomize build dir/
Error: unable to find one of 'kustomization.yaml', 'kustomization.yml' or 'Kustomization' in directory 'FULL_PATH/dir'
Depending on the CI/CD platform/solution/tool you should try other way around like for example:
split the Deployment into 2 directories kustomization_deploy/kustomization_rollback with kustomization.yaml
As a side note!
File names that kustomize uses are placed in the:
/kubernetes/vendor/sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/pkg/constants/constants.go
// Package constants holds global constants for the kustomize tool.
package constants
// KustomizationFileNames is a list of filenames that can be recognized and consumbed
// by Kustomize.
// In each directory, Kustomize searches for file with the name in this list.
// Only one match is allowed.
var KustomizationFileNames = []string{
"kustomization.yaml",
"kustomization.yml",
"Kustomization",
}
The logic behind choosing the Kustomization file is placed in:
/kubernetes/vendor/sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/pkg/target/kusttarget.go
Additional reference:
Github.com: Kubernetes-sigs: Kustomize
Kubernetes.io: Docs: Tasks: Manage kubernetes objects: Kustomization

How to pass a file using values file in helm chart?

I want to pass a certificate to the helm chart and currently I am passing using --set-file global.dbValues.dbcacertificate=./server.crt but instead i want to pass the file in values file of helm chart.
The Values.yaml file reads
global:
dbValues:
dbcacertificate: <Some Way to pass the .crt file>
According to the relevant documentation, one must pre-process a file that is external to the chart into a means that can be provided via --set or --values, since .Files.Get cannot read file paths that are external to the chart bundle.
So, given the following example template templates/secret.yaml containing:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
data:
dbcacertificate: {{ .Values.dbcacertificate | b64enc }}
one can use shell interpolation as:
helm template --set dbcacertificate="$(cat ./server.crt)" .
or, if shell interpolation is not suitable for your circumstances, you can pre-process the certificate into a yaml compatible format and feed it in via --values:
$ { echo "dbcacertificate: |"; sed -e 's/^/ /' server.crt; } > ca-cert.yaml
$ helm template --values ./ca-cert.yaml .

overriding values in kubernetes helm subcharts

I'm building a helm chart for my application, and I'm using stable/nginx-ingress as a subchart. I have a single overrides.yml file that contains (among other overrides):
nginx-ingress:
controller:
annotations:
external-dns.alpha.kubernetes.io/hostname: "*.{{ .Release.Name }}.mydomain.com"
So, I'm trying to use the release name in the overrides file, and my command looks something like: helm install mychart --values overrides.yml, but the resulting annotation does not do the variable interpolation, and instead results in something like
Annotations: external-dns.alpha.kubernetes.io/hostname=*.{{ .Release.Name }}.mydomain.com
I installed the subchart by using helm fetch, and I'm under the (misguided?) impression that it would be best to leave the fetched thing as-is, and override values in it - however, if variable interpolation isn't available with that method, I will have to put my values in the subchart's values.yaml.
Is there a best practice for this? Is it ok to put my own values in the fetched subchart's values.yaml? If I someday helm fetch this subchart again, I'll have to put those values back in by hand, instead of leaving them in an untouched overrides file...
Thanks in advance for any feedback!
I found the issue on github -- it is not supported yet:
https://github.com/kubernetes/helm/issues/2133
Helm 3.x (Q4 2019) now includes more about this, but for chart only, not for subchart (see TBBle's comment)
Milan Masek adds as a comment:
Thankfully, latest Helm manual says how to achieve this.
The trick is:
enclosing variable in " or in a yaml block |-, and
then referencing it in a template as {{ tpl .Values.variable . }}
This seems to make Helm happy.
Example:
$ cat Chart.yaml | grep appVersion
appVersion: 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT-d2e2f42
$ cat platform/shared/t/values.yaml | grep -A2 image:
image:
tag: |-
{{ .Chart.AppVersion }}
$ cat templates/deployment.yaml | grep image:
image: "{{ .Values.image.repository }}:{{ tpl .Values.image.tag . }}"
$ helm template . --values platform/shared/t/values.betradar.yaml | grep image
image: "docker-registry.default.svc:5000/namespace/service:0.0.1-SNAPSHOT-d2e2f42"
imagePullPolicy: Always
image: busybox
Otherwise there is an error thrown..
$ cat platform/shared/t/values.yaml | grep -A1 image:
image:
tag: {{ .Chart.AppVersion }}
1 $ helm template . --values platform/shared/t/values.yaml | grep image
Error: failed to parse platform/shared/t/values.yaml: error converting YAML to JSON: yaml: invalid map key: map[interface {}]interface {}{".Chart.AppVersion":interface {}(nil)}
For Helm subchart, TBBle adds to issue 2133
#MilanMasek 's solution won't work in general for subcharts, because the context . passed into tpl will have the subchart's values, not the parent chart's values.
!<
It happens to work in the specific example this ticket was opened for, because .Release.Name should be the same in all the subcharts.
It won't work for .Chart.AppVersion as in the tpl example.
There was a proposal to support tval in #3252 for interpolating templates in values files, but that was dropped in favour of a lua-based Hook system which has been proposed for Helm v3: #2492 (comment)
That last issue 2492 include workarounds like this one:
You can put a placeholder in the text that you want to template and then replace that placeholder with the template that you would like to use in yaml files in the template.
For now, what I've done in the CI job is run helm template on the values.yaml file.
It works pretty well atm.
cp values.yaml templates/
helm template $CI_BUILD_REF_NAME ./ | sed -ne '/^# Source:
templates\/values.yaml/,/^---/p' > values.yaml
rm templates/values.yaml
helm upgrade --install ...
This breaks if you have multiple -f values.yml files, but I'm thinking of writing a small helm wrapper that runs essentially runs that bash script for each values.yaml file.
fsniper illustrates again the issue:
There is a use case where you would need to pass deployment name to dependency charts where you have no control.
For example I am trying to set podAffinity for zookeeper. And I have an application helm chart which sets zookeeper as a dependency.
In this case, I am passing pod antiaffinity to zookeeper via values. So in my apps values.yaml file I have a zookeeper.affinity section.
If I had the ability to get the release name inside the values yaml I would just set this as default and be done with it.
But now for every deployment I have to override this value, which is a big problem.
Update Oct. 2022, from issue 2133:
lazychanger proposes
I submitted a plugin to override values.yaml with additional templates.
See lazychanger/helm-viv: "Helm-variable-in-values" and its example.