Helmify
CLI that creates Helm charts from kubernetes manifests.
Helmify reads a list of supported k8s objects from stdin and converts it to a helm chart.
Designed to generate charts for k8s operators but not limited to.
See examples of charts generated by helmify.
Supports Helm >=v3.6.0
Submit issue if some features missing for your use-case.
Usage
-
As pipe:
cat my-app.yaml | helmify mychart
Will create 'mychart' directory with Helm chart from yaml file with k8s objects.
awk 'FNR==1 && NR!=1 {print "---"}{print}' /<my_directory>/*.yaml | helmify mychart
Will create 'mychart' directory with Helm chart from all yaml files in <my_directory>
directory.
-
From filesystem:
helmify -f /my_directory/my-app.yaml mychart
Will create 'mychart' directory with Helm chart from my_directory/my-app.yaml
.
helmify -f /my_directory mychart
Will create 'mychart' directory with Helm chart from all yaml files in <my_directory>
directory.
helmify -f /my_directory -r mychart
Will create 'mychart' directory with Helm chart from all yaml files in <my_directory>
directory recursively.
helmify -f ./first_dir -f ./second_dir/my_deployment.yaml -f ./third_dir mychart
Will create 'mychart' directory with Helm chart from multiple directories and files.
-
From kustomize output:
kustomize build <kustomize_dir> | helmify mychart
Will create 'mychart' directory with Helm chart from kustomize output.
Integrate to your Operator-SDK/Kubebuilder project
- Open
Makefile
in your operator project generated by
Operator-SDK or Kubebuilder.
- Add these lines to
Makefile
:
- With operator-sdk version < v1.23.0
HELMIFY = $(shell pwd)/bin/helmify
helmify:
$(call go-get-tool,$(HELMIFY),github.com/arttor/helmify/cmd/helmify@v0.3.7)
helm: manifests kustomize helmify
$(KUSTOMIZE) build config/default | $(HELMIFY)
- With operator-sdk version >= v1.23.0
HELMIFY ?= $(LOCALBIN)/helmify
.PHONY: helmify
helmify: $(HELMIFY) ## Download helmify locally if necessary.
$(HELMIFY): $(LOCALBIN)
test -s $(LOCALBIN)/helmify || GOBIN=$(LOCALBIN) go install github.com/arttor/helmify/cmd/helmify@latest
helm: manifests kustomize helmify
$(KUSTOMIZE) build config/default | $(HELMIFY)
- Run
make helm
in project root. It will generate helm chart with name 'chart' in 'chart' directory.
Install
With Homebrew (for MacOS or Linux): brew install arttor/tap/helmify
Or download suitable for your system binary from the Releases page.
Unpack the helmify binary and add it to your PATH and you are good to go!
Available options
Helmify takes a chart name for an argument.
Usage:
helmify [flags] CHART_NAME
- CHART_NAME
is optional. Default is 'chart'. Can be a directory, e.g. 'deploy/charts/mychart'.
flag |
description |
sample |
-h -help |
Prints help |
helmify -h |
-f |
File source for k8s manifests (directory or file), multiple sources supported |
helmify -f ./test_data |
-r |
Scan file directory recursively. Used only if -f provided |
helmify -f ./test_data -r |
-v |
Enable verbose output. Prints WARN and INFO. |
helmify -v |
-vv |
Enable very verbose output. Also prints DEBUG. |
helmify -vv |
-version |
Print helmify version. |
helmify -version |
-crd-dir |
Place crds in their own folder per Helm 3 docs. Caveat: CRDs templating is not supported by Helm. |
helmify -crd-dir |
-image-pull-secrets |
Allows the user to use existing secrets as imagePullSecrets |
helmify -image-pull-secrets |
-original-name |
Use the object's original name instead of adding the chart's release name as the common prefix. |
helmify -original-name |
-cert-manager-as-subchart |
Allows the user to install cert-manager as a subchart |
helmify -cert-manager-as-subchart |
-cert-manager-version |
Allows the user to specify cert-manager subchart version. Only useful with cert-manager-as-subchart. (default "v1.12.2") |
helmify -cert-manager-version=v1.12.2 |
-cert-manager-install-crd |
Allows the user to install cert-manager CRD as part of the cert-manager subchart.(default "true") |
helmify -cert-manager-install-crd |
-preserve-ns |
Allows users to use the object's original namespace instead of adding all the resources to a common namespace. (default "false") |
helmify -preserve-ns |
-add-webhook-option |
Adds an option to enable/disable webhook installation |
helmify -add-webhook-option |
Status
Supported k8s resources:
- Deployment, DaemonSet, StatefulSet
- Job, CronJob
- Service, Ingress
- PersistentVolumeClaim
- RBAC (ServiceAccount, (cluster-)role, (cluster-)roleBinding)
- configs (ConfigMap, Secret)
- webhooks (cert, issuer, ValidatingWebhookConfiguration)
- custom resource definitions (CRD)
Known issues
- Helmify will not overwrite
Chart.yaml
file if presented. Done on purpose.
- Helmify will not delete existing template files, only overwrite.
- Helmify overwrites templates and values files on every run.
This means that all your manual changes in helm template files will be lost on the next run.
- if switching between the using the
-crd-dir
flag it is better to delete and regenerate the from scratch to ensure crds are not accidentally spliced/formatted into the same chart. Bear in mind you will want to update your Chart.yaml
thereafter.
Develop
To support a new type of k8s object template:
- Implement
helmify.Processor
interface. Place implementation in pkg/processor
. The package contains
examples for most k8s objects.
- Register your processor in the
pkg/app/app.go
- Add relevant input sample to
test_data/kustomize.output
.
Run
Clone repo and execute command:
cat test_data/k8s-operator-kustomize.output | go run ./cmd/helmify mychart
Will generate mychart
Helm chart form file test_data/k8s-operator-kustomize.output
representing typical operator
kustomize output.
Test
For manual testing, run program with debug output:
cat test_data/k8s-operator-kustomize.output | go run ./cmd/helmify -vv mychart
Then inspect logs and generated chart in ./mychart
directory.
To execute tests, run:
go test ./...
Beside unit-tests, project contains e2e test pkg/app/app_e2e_test.go
.
It's a go test, which uses test_data/*
to generate a chart in temporary directory.
Then runs helm lint --strict
to check if generated chart is valid.
Contribute
Following rules will help changes to be accepted faster:
- For more than one-line bugfixes consider creating an issue with bug description or feature request
- For feature request try to think about and cover following topics (when applicable):
- Motivation: why feature is needed? Which problem does it solve? What is current workaround?
- Backward-compatibility: existing users expect that after upgrading helmify version their existing generated charts wont be changed without consent.
- For bugfix PR consider adding example to /test_data source yamls reproducing bug.
Contribution flow
Check list before submitting PR:
- Run
go fmt ./...
- Run tests
go test ./...
- Update chart examples:
cat test_data/sample-app.yaml | go run ./cmd/helmify examples/app
cat test_data/k8s-operator-kustomize.output | go run ./cmd/helmify examples/operator
- In case of long commit history (more than 3) squash local commits into one