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.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. From kustomize output:

   kustomize build <kustomize_dir> | helmify mychart

   Will create 'mychart' directory with Helm chart from kustomize output.

1. Open Makefile in your operator project generated by Operator-SDK or Kubebuilder.
2. 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/[email protected])
  
  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)

3. Run make helm in project root. It will generate helm chart with name 'chart' in 'chart' directory.

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!

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'.

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)

• 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.

To support a new type of k8s object template:

1. Implement helmify.Processor interface. Place implementation in pkg/processor. The package contains examples for most k8s objects.
2. Register your processor in the pkg/app/app.go
3. Add relevant input sample to test_data/kustomize.output.

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.

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.

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.

Check list before submitting PR:

1. Run go fmt ./...
2. Run tests go test ./...
3. 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

4. In case of long commit history (more than 3) squash local commits into one