helm-git

The Helm downloader plugin that provides GIT protocol support.

This fits multiple use cases:

• Need to keep charts private
• Doesn't want to package charts before installing
• Charts in a sub-path, or with another ref than master
• Pull values files directly from (private) Git repository

Install

Use helm CLI to install this plugin:

helm plugin install https://github.com/aslafy-z/helm-git --version 0.16.0

To use the plugin, you only need git. If you want to build the plugin from source, or you want to contribute to the plugin, please see these instructions.

Uninstall

helm plugin remove helm-git

Usage

helm-git will package any chart that is not so you can directly reference paths to original charts.

Here's the Git urls format, followed by examples:

git+https://[provider.com]/[user]/[repo]@[path/to/charts][?[ref=git-ref][&sparse=0][&depupdate=0][&package=0]]
git+ssh://git@[provider.com]/[user]/[repo]@[path/to/charts][?[ref=git-ref][&sparse=0][&depupdate=0][&package=0]]
git+file://[path/to/repo]@[path/to/charts][?[ref=git-ref][&sparse=0][&depupdate=0][&package=0]]

git+https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager@deploy/charts?ref=v0.6.2&sparse=0
git+ssh://git@github.com/jetstack/cert-manager@deploy/charts?ref=v0.6.2&sparse=1
git+ssh://git@github.com/jetstack/cert-manager@deploy/charts?ref=v0.6.2
git+https://github.com/istio/istio@install/kubernetes/helm?ref=1.5.4&sparse=0&depupdate=0
git+https://github.com/bitnami/charts@bitnami/wordpress?ref=master&sparse=0&depupdate=0&package=0

Add your repository:

helm repo add cert-manager git+https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager@deploy/charts?ref=v0.6.2

You can use it as any other Helm chart repository. Try:

$ helm search repo cert-manager
NAME                                    CHART VERSION   APP VERSION     DESCRIPTION
cert-manager/cert-manager               v0.6.6          v0.6.2          A Helm chart for cert-manager

$ helm install cert-manager/cert-manager --version "0.6.6"

Fetching also works:

helm fetch cert-manager/cert-manager --version "0.6.6"
helm fetch git+https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager@deploy/charts/cert-manager-v0.6.2.tgz?ref=v0.6.2

Pulling value files:

helm install . -f git+https://github.com/aslafy-z/helm-git@tests/fixtures/example-chart/values.yaml

Environment variables

name	description	default
HELM_GIT_HELM_BIN	Path to the helm binary. If not set, $HELM_BIN will be used.	helm
HELM_GIT_DEBUG	Setting this value to 1 increases helm-git log level.	0
HELM_GIT_TRACE	Setting this value to 1 increases helm-git log level to the maximum.	0
HELM_GIT_REPO_CACHE	Path to use as a Git repository cache to avoid fetching repos more than once. If empty, caching of Git repositories is disabled.	""
HELM_GIT_CHART_CACHE	Path to use as a Helm chart cache to avoid re-packaging/re-indexing charts. If empty, caching of Helm charts is disabled.	""

Arguments

name	description	default
ref	Set git ref to a branch or tag. Also works for commits with sparse=0.	master
sparse	Set git strategy to sparse. Will try to fetch only the needed commits for the target path. If set to 0, default git strategy will be used.	1
depupdate	Run helm dependency update on the retrieved chart. If set to 0, this step is skipped.	1
package	Run helm package on the retrieved chart. If set to 0, this step is skipped.	1

Note on Git authentication

As this plugin uses git CLI to clone repos. You can configure private access in the same manner that with any git repo.

• using ssh: Start a ssh-agent daemon
• using https: Use a credentials helper

Note on SSH relative paths

Helm parses the input URL before passing it down to the Helm downloader plugins (which is the type of this helm-git plugin). It does so by using the net/url.Parse Golang method, which does not support the full IETF specification. Specifically, it does not support : as the first path separator like in git+ssh://git@github.com:aslafy-z/helm-git as Git supports it. This means that you'll have to use an absolute path instead by using the / separator as in git+ssh://git@github.com/aslafy-z/helm-git. This should not be an issue in most case as major hosts supports the use of absolute paths instead of relative ones. If this becomes an issue for you, please open an issue and we may implement something to fill the gap until Golang or Helm does so.

Troubleshooting

You can enable debug output by setting HELM_GIT_DEBUG environment variable to 1:

HELM_GIT_DEBUG=1 helm repo add cert-manager git+https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager@deploy/charts?ref=v0.6.2

In order to debug in a more efficient maneer, I advise you use helm fetch instead of helm repo add.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see these instructions that will help you to develop the plugin.

Alternatives

• https://github.com/diwakar-s-maurya/helm-git
• https://github.com/sagansystems/helm-github

License

MIT