How to make and share your own Helm package
by Grigory Ignatyev
Hi everyone!
Today I want to show you how you can create your own Helm package. We will also setup our own helm repository (using GitHub pages) and share our package with others. Let’s start!
Create a package
What is a helm chart? It is basically a set of templates and a file containing variables used to fill these templates. Let’s have a look at an example. I assume that you already have Helm installed and configured at this point.
To start working on a chart, Helm uses asimple command create:
$ helm create my-appAfter that Helm creates a directory with the following layout:
my-app/
├── charts
├── Chart.yaml
├── templates
│ ├── deployment.yaml
│ ├── _helpers.tpl
│ ├── ingress.yaml
│ ├── NOTES.txt
│ └── service.yaml
└── values.yaml2 directories, 7 files
It has charts directory with chart dependencies, but we don’t need it at the moment. Next comes Chart.yaml containing global variables for the chart such as version and description:
$ cat my-app/Chart.yaml
apiVersion: v1
appVersion: "1.0"
description: A Helm chart for Kubernetes
name: my-app
version: 0.1.0Then comes templates directory – there you put all the *.yaml files for Kubernetes. Helm uses Go template markup language to customize these files. Helm creates three default file types: deployment, service and ingress. All the files in this directory are ‘skeletons’ which are filled with the variables from values.yamlwhen you deploy your Helm chart. File _helpers.tpl contains your custom helper functions for variable calculaton.
By default helm creates an nginx deployment. Let’s customize it a bit. Add new ConfigMap to the templates directory:
$ cat << HELM > my-app/templates/cm.yaml
apiVersion: v1
data:
nginx.conf: |
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
server {
listen 80;
location / {
return 200 "===============================\n\n This is your helm deploy! \n\n===============================\n";
}
}
}
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
name: nginx-config
HELMPoint our nginx Deployment to that ConfigMap. Add the following lines to the deployment.yaml:
volumes:
- name: config
configMap:
name: nginx-configand:
volumeMounts:
- name: config
mountPath: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
subPath: nginx.confThat’s it! Let’s check if we are doing the right thing:
helm template my-appThis will generate all templates with variables and show the output. Now that we know everything is OK, we can deploy the chart:
helm install my-app --name=my-app-nameThen check that Service and Deploy have been created and curl our Service:
$ kubectl get svc
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
my-app-name-my-app ClusterIP 10.100.56.254 <none> 80/TCP 44m
$ curl 10.100.56.254
=============================== This is your helm deploy! ===============================
Congratulations! We have created and deployed our first Helm chart.
Additionally, you can create a package:
$ helm package my-appThis command creates an archive like my-app-0.1.0.tgz — now you can share your chart with others. For instance, you can upload this file to Helm repository, which we are going to do now.
Create Helm repo and publish your chart
Helm repo is an HTTP server that has file index.yaml and all your chart files. You can use any http-server, but the easiest way to do that is to use GitHub pages.
First, create a GitHub repo, clone it locally and create a branch (note: it should be namedch-pages) for our charts (I will be using the repo called gree-gorey/helm-example):
$ git clone https://github.com/gree-gorey/helm-example.git
$ cd helm-example
$ git checkout -b gh-pagesThen create an empty file and push it to the repo:
$ touch index.yaml
$ git add index.yaml
$ git commit -a -m "add index.yaml"
$ git push --set-upstream origin gh-pagesThen go to github.com to your repo settings and scroll down to “GitHub pages” section. Then choose gh-pages branch for the source. Copy the link above to the clipboard. Mine is https://gree-gorey.github.io/helm-example/
Now we are going to add our chart to that repo:
$ helm package my-app
$ mv my-app-0.1.0.tgz helm-example
$ helm repo index helm-example/ --url https://gree-gorey.github.io/helm-example/The last command generates index.yaml file. Let’s take a look at it:
$ cat helm-example/index.yaml
apiVersion: v1
entries:
my-app:
- apiVersion: v1
appVersion: "1.0"
created: 2018-03-30T14:00:56.531328411Z
description: A Helm chart for Kubernetes
digest: 29089aabaa8aa08a03215098b1982ad38f6cd9de1c9b25ff842003a53cad881d
name: my-app
urls:
- https://gree-gorey.github.io/helm-example/my-app-0.1.0.tgz
version: 0.1.0
generated: 2018-03-30T14:00:56.530846921ZNow commit & push the changes:
$ git commit -a -m "change index"
$ git push originCheck that your server is serving index.yaml:
$ curl https://gree-gorey.github.io/helm-example/index.yaml
apiVersion: v1
entries:
my-app:
- apiVersion: v1
appVersion: "1.0"
created: 2018-03-30T14:00:56.531328411Z
description: A Helm chart for Kubernetes
digest: 29089aabaa8aa08a03215098b1982ad38f6cd9de1c9b25ff842003a53cad881d
name: my-app
urls:
- https://gree-gorey.github.io/helm-example/my-app-0.1.0.tgz
version: 0.1.0
generated: 2018-03-30T14:00:56.530846921ZOK, we did it! Now we can add this repo to another Helm installation:
$ helm repo add helm-example https://gree-gorey.github.io/helm-example
$ helm repo list
NAME URL
helm-example https://gree-gorey.github.io/helm-exampleNow check it by creating a new deploy from the repo:
$ helm install helm-example/my-app --name=my-app-nameAnd check that everything is running.
That’s it! We’ve published our chart to repository.
Please leave your feedback in the comments section — I’d love to hear from you! Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram chat to stay tuned!
You might also want to check our Containerum project on GitHub. We need you feedback to make it stronger — you can submit an issue, or just support the project by giving it a ⭐. Your support really matters to us!
Grigory Ignatyev, K8s Engineer at Containerum
