Helm Chart

A helm chart is a helm package combining kubernetes resource files templates and their values. Following are the contents of a helm chart or a helm package.

1. Chart.yaml
2. templates
3. values.yaml
4. Other files

Chart.yaml contains information about the package. A sample chart.yaml can be like following.

apiVersion: v1
name: Smriti
version: 0.1.0
description: Smriti helm chart
home: https://smriti.com
sources:
    - https://github.com/smriti
maintainers:
    - email: nitin@gmail.com
      name: Nitin

Templates are kubernetes resource files with custom values as placeholders. These values will then be populated by helm using values.yaml file.

templates/pod.yaml

kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
    name: {{ .Values.pod_name }}
spec:
    containers:
        - name: {{ .Values.pod_container_name }}
          image: {{ .Values.pod_image }}

Corresponding values file can be,

values.yaml

pod_name: "nginx-pod"
pod_image: "nginx"
pod_container_name: "nginx-container"

Charts Repo

There is helm chart repository where people publish their charts. We can also list those charts using command,

helm search hub wordpress

We can also add custom repo to helm using command

helm repo add <repo-name> <repo-url>

Now we can search in custom repo using command,

helm search repo <chart-name>

References

1. https://artifacthub.io/