Skip to main content

Packaging a Helm Chart for a Release

This topic describes how to package a Helm chart and the Replicated SDK into a chart archive that can be added to a release.

Overview​

To add a Helm chart to a release, you first add the Replicated SDK as a dependency of the Helm chart and then package the chart and its dependencies into a .tgz chart archive.

The Replicated SDK is a Helm chart can be installed as a small service alongside your application. The SDK is strongly recommended for applications that will be installed with Helm because it provides access to key Replicated features, such as instance insights and telemetry. For more information, see About the Replicated SDK.

Chart Version Requirement​

The chart version in your Helm chart must comply with image tag format requirements. A valid tag can contain only lowercase and uppercase letters, digits, underscores, periods, and dashes.

The chart version must also comply with the Semantic Versioning (SemVer) specification. When you run the helm install command without the --version flag, Helm retrieves the list of all available image tags for the chart from the registry and compares them using the SemVer comparison rules described in the SemVer specification. The version that is installed is the version with the largest tag value. For more information about the SemVer specification, see the Semantic Versioning documentation.

Package a Helm Chart​

This procedure shows how to create a Helm chart archive to add to a release. For more information about the Helm CLI commands in this procedure, see the Helm Commands section in the Helm documentation.

To package a Helm chart so that it can be added to a release:

  1. In your local directory, cd to the location of the Chart.yaml file for the Helm chart.

    note

    If the Helm chart that you want to use is available in a chart repository and you do not have access to the source, you can run helm repo add and helm pull to download a local copy of the chart archive. For more information, see Helm Repo and Helm Pull in the Helm documentation.

  2. In the Helm chart Chart.yaml, add the Replicated SDK as a dependency:

    # Chart.yaml
    dependencies:
    - name: replicated
      repository: oci://registry.replicated.com/library
      version: 1.0.0-beta.8

    For the latest version information for the Replicated SDK, see the replicated-sdk repository in GitHub.

    For additional guidelines related to adding the SDK as a dependency, see How to Distribute the SDK in About the Replicated SDK.

  3. Update the charts/ directory:

    helm dependency update

  4. Package the Helm chart into a .tgz archive:

    helm package .

    The Helm chart, including any dependencies, is packaged and copied to your current directory in a .tgz file. The file uses the naming convention: CHART_NAME-VERSION.tgz. For example, postgresql-8.1.2.tgz.

  5. Add the .tgz chart archive to a release. See Managing Releases with the Vendor Portal or Managing Releases with the CLI.

    After the release is promoted, your Helm chart is automatically pushed to the Replicated registry. For information about how to install the release in a development environment with Helm, see Installing with Helm.