helm: Helm3: No 'init', doesn't use existing ~/.helm

./helm version version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3.0.0-beta.1", GitCommit:"f76b5f21adb53a85de8925f4a9d4f9bd99f185b5", GitTreeState:"clean", GoVersion:"go1.12.9"}

I’ve upgraded from helm v2 by downloading the beta v3 client. I’ve deleted the tiller account with the v2 client. No helm commands using v3 seem to work – it knows nothing about repositories. If I supply them on command line, it still doesn’t DTRT:

➜  helm-darwin-amd64 ./helm --repository-cache ~/.helm/repository/cache --repository-config ~/.helm/repository/repositories.yaml repo update
Error: couldn't load repositories file (): open : no such file or directory

But it clearly can read the config therein:

➜  helm-darwin-amd64 ./helm --repository-cache ~/.helm/repository/cache --repository-config ~/.helm/repository/repositories.yaml repo list
NAME  	URL
stable	https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com
local 	http://127.0.0.1:8879/charts
gitlab	https://charts.gitlab.io/

But installing any chart fails:

➜  helm-darwin-amd64 ./helm --repository-cache ~/.helm/repository/cache --repository-config ~/.helm/repository/repositories.yaml install stable/kong --set ingressController.enabled=true -g
Error: failed to download "stable/kong" (hint: running `helm repo update` may help)
[1]    66253 exit 1     ./helm --repository-cache ~/.helm/repository/cache --repository-config

Why not add a virtual subcommand helm init like in v2, which either reconfigures helm based on v2 config, or explains properly how to modify the existing config? This is really not obvious. The docs on the v3.helm.sh/docs all refer to v2 and talk about helm init and so on. If the docs are this unready then it’s not in Beta, surely? This is just silly.

Can you please point out the docs that explain how to upgrade to v3 without losing all functionality? Surely they exist?

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 5 years ago
Comments: 21 (10 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

Found this in another issue:

helm repo add stable https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com

+42

tammersaleh on Sep 5, 2019

helm repo add stable https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com/

+19

adampl on Nov 17, 2019

@tammersaleh check out my blog post https://rimusz.net/helm_v3_beta on how to use helm v3 and changes it introduced

rimusz on Sep 6, 2019

The reason why the documentation doesn’t explain how to add back the stable repository is because the charts team are planning to deprecate that repository. The cloud bucket hosting that chart repository will eventually be shut down and will no longer host charts.

Even though Helm is designed to work with numerous distributed repositories, the stable repository has given the impression or feel of a “central” repository. The central repository has become more than a handful to manage and scale so it isn’t going to work for the next phase of growth in the community.

This is where Helm Hub comes in. We want to encourage people to host their own chart repositories and share them in a more discoverable place. The charts team is working on that migration plan, and they will have more information to share once that is ready.

RE: the docs not explaining this, thanks for pointing that out. It’s on our roadmap to update the documentation prior to the 3.0 final release. We’ve been focusing on bug squashing, but once Helm Summit is finished, we should have breathing room to update the documentation

Anyways, this is starting to get off topic from OP’s discussion. Feel free to ask these questions on Slack if you have further questions about the decision to remove the stable repository from Helm 3. Thanks!

bacongobbler on Sep 6, 2019

we still should properly document the stable remove removal and how to use it in the mean time till it gets shut down, as right now not documenting its removal properly I see it makes a big confusion that helm v3 beta is not working

rimusz on Sep 6, 2019