Ability to deploy new charts with predefined values.yaml

[slamer59]

Hello,
I have some applications that don't require to run all day long. A UI that will help to store and deploy,uninstall some charts. would be really nice feature.

A kind of launcher in fact.

Happy to discuss further if needed.

[undera]

This sounds interesting, but I did not understand it fully. Do you mean that you want to remember values.yaml for the chart when you uninstall it, and then offer it once you install it again?

[slamer59]

Yes. Exactly. See it as an application launcher. In Lens for exemple you :

• register your chart (git / helm repo)
• load the definition and install/update the chart

Benefits:

• it is installed in k8s so anyone with access can do this fast
• store the values
• Resource usage.
• one interface endpoint for many admin application

[appdirect-kasidit]

I'm not sure if it's the same with this use case, but it'd be nice if we can have predefined non-default values files that we can select via UI and will automatically load into the user defined panel.

My example use case would be if we have a chart that has multiple database engine that we can choose

Default values.yaml

mysql:
    enabled: false
    # configurations

postgres:
    enabled: false
    # configurations

Then in my predefined values.mysql.yaml

mysql:
    enabled: true
    # configurations

and my predefined values.postgres.yaml

postgres:
    enabled: true
    # configurations

[undera]

@appdirect-kasidit This schema of "values.mysql.yaml" - is it some sort of de-facto standard? Or is it your custom thing?

[appdirect-kasidit]

@undera it's custom thing for me, just a way to identify which file we need to add during helm install like for example

helm install . -f ./values/values.mysql.yaml 

if selecting from a list is not possible, ability to browse and select file would be a great alternative as well

[undera]

I think this is valuable feature idea. Just one more question: how would these files map to different charts? Don't you worry to show irrelevant values files for other charts?

[appdirect-kasidit]

If we store multiple values files into the same chart directory, I think it should be sufficient enough, or perhaps offer some sorts of directory that we could store this in, for example, it could be something like

helm-charts
├── chart-1
│   ├── charts
│   │   └── ...
│   ├── templates
│   │   └── ...
│   ├── .helmignore
│   ├── Chart.yaml
│   ├── values.yaml
│   ├── values.mysql.yaml
│   └── values.postgres.yaml
├── chart-2
│   ├── charts
│   │   └── ...
│   ├── templates
│   │   └── ...
│   ├── .helmignore
│   ├── Chart.yaml
│   ├── values.custom.yaml
│   └── values.yaml
...

or

helm-charts
├── chart-1
│   ├── charts
│   │   └── ...
│   ├── templates
│   │   └── ...
│   ├── values
│   │   ├── values.mysql.yaml
│   │   └── values.postgres.yaml
│   ├── .helmignore
│   ├── Chart.yaml
│   └── values.yaml
├── chart-2
│   ├── charts
│   │   └── ...
│   ├── templates
│   │   └── ...
│   ├── values
│   │   └── values.custom.yaml
│   ├── .helmignore
│   ├── Chart.yaml
│   └── values.yaml
...

[undera]

Do you work like this with --local-chart option?

[appdirect-kasidit]

yes

[appdirect-kasidit]

im not exactly sure how this would translate into remote cluster though

[undera]

I would implement it the following way:

1. Create an LRU cache, backed by file in our cache dir
2. Limit number of entries in cache to 5-10 per-chart
3. Store per-chart the values snapshots
4. Offer a drop-down with cached snapshots.
5. Maybe use explicit button of "remember as" instead of implicit