Helm Chart Repository on Gitlab Package Registry 🐺

Why Helm?

Applying YAML configuration files can get overwhelming, especially when needing to deploy into several environments or wanting to version the manifests. It is also cumbersome to maintain plain YAML files for more complex deployments which can easily extend to more than 1000 lines per file.

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu VM
• Helm 3
• Helm plugin: cm-push
• Git

1. Setup Gitlab

• Create new project / repository

  

• Generate Access Token
  • Click on your profile picture on the upper left, then click Edit profile
  • On the left side, click Access Token then Add new token

    

  • Give appropriate permission for this token. What must be enabled are: read_repository, write_repository, read_registry, and write_registry
  • Copy and store your newly created Access Token on a safe place

2. Create Helm Chart

• Clone gitlab repository

  # clone repository
  git clone https://gitlab.com/phangvicky/helm-charts.git
  
  # change directory into repo
  cd helm-charts

• Manually create helm chart structure

  mkdir Charts
  mkdir Charts/app-1
  touch Charts/app-1/Chart.yaml
  touch Charts/app-1/values.yaml
  mkdir Charts/app-1/templates
  touch Charts/app-1/templates/_helpers.tpl
  touch Charts/app-1/templates/serviceaccount.yaml
  touch Charts/app-1/templates/deployment.yaml
  touch Charts/app-1/templates/service.yaml
  mkdir packages

• Package the Helm Chart

  # package app-1
  helm package Charts/app-1 --destination packages

• Generate helm repo index

  A valid chart repository must have an index file. The index file contains information about each chart in the chart repository. The helm repo index command will generate an index file based on a given local directory that contains packaged charts.

  # generate index.yaml for packaged charts inside folder 'packages'
  # for the url, you just need to copy the project id of your helm-charts repository
  helm repo index . --url https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/<gitlab-project-id>/packages/helm/stable

• Commit and push all changes to Gitlab repository

• Publish helm-chart package

  • Add your helm repostiory

    helm repo add --username <username> --password <access-token> <repo-name> https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<project-id>/packages/helm/stable
    
    # example
    helm repo add --username userv --password glpat-userv-token vicky https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/12345678/packages/helm/stable
  • Push the package

    helm cm-push packages/<package-name>.tgz <repo-name>
    
    # example
    helm cm-push packages/app-1-1.0.0.tgz vicky

• Verify your helm repo

  • Update helm repo

    helm repo update
  • List helm repo, and you should get your repo name listed

    # list helm repo
    helm repo ls
    
    # output
    NAME        URL
    vicky       https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/12345678/packages/helm/stable
  • Search for published charts inside your repo

    helm search repo vicky
    
    # output
    NAME            CHART VERSION       APP VERSION     DESCRIPTION
    vicky/app-1     1.0.0               1.0.0           A Helm chart for Kubernetes

References

• Helm Chart Repository with GitHub Pages
• The Chart Repository Guide
• Helm charts in the package registry
• Get started with GitLab's Helm Package Registry