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.
Interested in joining the conversation for this category? Please join us in our public epic where we discuss this topic and can answer any questions you may have. Your contributions are more than welcome.
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:
The first priority is to deliver the MVC gitlab-ce#35884 which will allow users to publish, share and version Helm charts, right from within GitLab.
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-ce#35884is currently the top customer issue.
There are currently no internal customer issues.
gitlab-ee#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.
