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 |
-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-as-subchart |
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 yourChart.yaml
thereafter.
Develop
To support a new type of k8s object template:
- Implement
helmify.Processor
interface. Place implementation inpkg/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.