Users or organizations who deploy complex pieces of software towards Kubernetes managed environments depend on a standardized way to automate provisioning those external environments. Helm is the package manager for Kubernetes and helps users define, manage, install, upgrade, and rollback even the most complex Kubernetes application. Helm uses a package format called Charts to describe a set of Kubernetes resources
Helm charts will be easy to create, version, share and publish right within GitLab. This would provide an official and integrated method to publish, control, and version control Helm charts.
This page is maintained by the Product Manager for Package, Tim Rizzi (E-mail)
We will integrate Helm charts similar to other package management solutions in GitLab such as Docker, Maven, and NPM in order to see to the following use cases:
With the launch of Helm 3, which is now in beta, pushing and pulling charts can now be done via OCI Registry. This means that users can now utilize the GitLab Container Registry for hosting Helm charts. gitlab-#30669 will add support for Helm Charts to the Container Registry. It's important to note, that users are already doing this, but the user interface currently doesn't display accurate metadata.
This category is currently at the "Planned" maturity level, and our next maturity target is Minimal (see our definitions of maturity levels). Key deliverables to achieve this are:
Helm Hub is the official Helm charts repository, which is supported by products like Artifactory from Jfrog and by Codefresh. Additionally, Chart museum offers an open sourced self-managed solution, aside from being able to code one yourself with GitLab pages, Apache, or by using a GH repo's raw publishing url.
The Azure container registry can be used as a host for Helm chart repositories. With Helm 3 changing the storage backend to container registries, we are evaluating if we can offer the same level of support.
GitLab should join the open source offering of this capability, and improve upon it with features targeted at our EE offering.
There are currently no customer success or sales issues.
The MVC gitlab-#30669 is currently the top customer issue.
There are currently no internal customer issues.
gitlab-#9993 details the need to track which underlying packages a release incorporates and detail any changes in those underlying dependencies. Although not specific to Helm charts, this functionality represents a leap forward in our current offering.
