⎈ Helm Templexer

Render Helm charts for multiple environments with explicit config while keeping the overhead at ease.

The helm-templexer wraps Helm v3+, please ensure that it is installed and in the PATH.

cat > my-app.yaml <<EOF
version: v2
chart: tests/data/nginx-chart
release_name: my-app
output_path: manifests
deployments:
  - name: edge
  - name: stage
  - name: prod
EOF

helm-templexer render my-app.yaml

Outcome:

❯ exa -T manifests
manifests
├── edge
│  └── my-app
│     └── manifest.yaml
├── prod
│  └── my-app
│     └── manifest.yaml
└── stage
   └── my-app
      └── manifest.yaml

Configuration

Configuration can be provided as YAML format.

All paths are evaluated relative to the configuration file during execution.

Looking for schema v1? Please see helm-templexer 1.x.

Deployments can override several top-level fields:

Additional Options to The Render Command

Extending The helm template Call

Use --additional-options to pass data to the underlying helm template call. Beware that these additional options get added to every call, i.e. to each deployment.

A common use case we found was to provide the container tag:

helm-templexer render --additional-options="--set-string image.tag=${revision}" my-app.yaml

Render a Subset of Deployments

Use --filter to render a specific deployment. Example: To render only the prod, pass the regex to the filter option.

helm-templexer render --filter="prod" my-app.yaml

Update Helm Dependencies Before Rendering

Use --update-dependencies to run helm dependencies update once before starting to render the deployments.

helm-templexer render --update-dependencies my-app.yaml

Pipe Manifest Output Through Tool(s) Before Writing to Disk

Use --pipe to pass the manifest output through a tool or set of tools before writing to a file.

Please mind that this option requires an equal sign (=), i.e. `--pipe="".

helm-templexer render --pipe="kbld -f -" my-app.yaml

You can define the argument multiple times; the commands will be added in order of appearance to the final command.

helm-templexer render --pipe="kbld -f -" --pipe="tee /dev/stdout" my-app.yaml

If anything unexpected happens, you can use -v, -vv and -vvv to increase the log level and see the underlying command.

Installation

Docker

# create the directory where helm-templexer will render to
mkdir -p tests/data/manifests

# let helm-templexer's user id (1001) own the directory
sudo chown -R 1001 tests/data/manifests

# pull and run the image
docker pull ghcr.io/hendrikmaus/helm-templexer
docker run --rm --volume $(pwd):/srv --workdir /srv/tests/data ghcr.io/hendrikmaus/helm-templexer render config_example.yaml 

Include helm-templexer in your Dockerfile:

FROM ghcr.io/hendrikmaus/helm-templexer AS helm-templexer-provider
COPY --from=helm-templexer-provider /usr/bin/helm-templexer /usr/bin
COPY --from=helm-templexer-provider /usr/bin/helm /usr/bin

Pre-compiled Binary

Please set/replace $TARGET and $VERSION accordingly.

wget https://github.com/hendrikmaus/helm-templexer/releases/download/v$VERSION/helm-templexer-$VERSION-$TARGET.tar.gz -O - | tar xz && mv helm-templexer /usr/bin/helm-templexer

For example VERSION=2.0.0 and TARGET=aarch64-apple-darwin

The mv to /usr/bin might require sudo.

Validate Against Checksum

To validate the downloaded archive against the checksum:

wget https://github.com/hendrikmaus/helm-templexer/releases/download/v$VERSION/helm-templexer-$VERSION-$TARGET.tar.gz
echo "$(wget https://github.com/hendrikmaus/helm-templexer/releases/download/v$VERSION/helm-templexer-$VERSION-$TARGET.tar.gz.sha256 -O -) helm-templexer-$VERSION-$TARGET.tar.gz" | sha256sum --check --strict --status

Homebrew

brew tap hendrikmaus/tap
brew install helm-templexer

Cargo Install

Helm Templexer is written in Rust. You will need rustc version 1.35.0 or higher. The recommended way to install Rust is from the official download page. Once you have it set up, a simple make install will compile helm-templexer and install it into $HOME/.cargo/bin.

If you’re using a recent version of Cargo (0.5.0 or higher), you can use the cargo install command:

cargo install helm-templexer

Cargo will build the binary and place it in $HOME/.cargo/bin (this location can be overridden by setting the --root option).