helmfile: .Capabilities.APIVersions returns wrong results

The helm built-in object Capabilities.APIVersions returns incorrect results when running with helmfile in my cluster.

For demonstration purposes, I have the following test.yaml file, which prints the results from APIVersions using incubator/raw:

templates:
- |
  apiVersion: apps/v1
  kind: Deployment
  metadata:
    name: test
    labels:
      test: |
        {{ .Capabilities.APIVersions }}

Here is a helmfile.yaml using this template:

repositories:
- name: incubator
  url: https://kubernetes-charts-incubator.storage.googleapis.com
  
releases:
- name: test
  namespace: monitoring
  chart: incubator/raw
  version: 0.2.3
  values:
  - test.yaml

When I run helm install test incubator/raw -f test.yaml --dry-run I get the correct list of API Versions available in my cluster. helmfile template outputs a different set of Versions with many entries missing.

helmfile version v0.94.1
# kubectl version (AWS EKS)
Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"16", GitVersion:"v1.16.3", GitCommit:"b3cbbae08ec52a7fc73d334838e18d17e8512749", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2019-11-13T11:23:11Z", GoVersion:"go1.12.12", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
Server Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"14+", GitVersion:"v1.14.8-eks-b8860f", GitCommit:"b8860f6c40640897e52c143f1b9f011a503d6e46", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2019-11-25T00:55:38Z", GoVersion:"go1.12.10", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
# helm version
version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3.0.0", GitCommit:"e29ce2a54e96cd02ccfce88bee4f58bb6e2a28b6", GitTreeState:"clean", GoVersion:"go1.13.4"}

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 5 years ago
Comments: 22 (7 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

app option to pass apiVersions to helm diff and helm template resolves #1014 — committed to a-hat/helmfile by a-hat 5 years ago
feat: Option to pass apiVersions to `helm diff` and `helm template` (#1046) This makes it possible to pass the API Capabilities to helmfile when executing a task that does not render against an actua... — committed to roboll/helmfile by a-hat 5 years ago

Most upvoted comments

Upon further investigation, helm template seems to be the culprit.

The documentation of this command says:

Any values that would normally be looked up or retrieved in-cluster will be
faked locally. Additionally, none of the server-side testing of chart validity
(e.g. whether an API is supported) is done.

In my case, I was running helmfile apply, which (if I understand correctly) first executes helm diff to detect if there are any changes, which probably is based on helm template. In the chart I was installing, there is a check on the API Versions, and this check did not return the expected results, so no changes were detected by helmfile. If I run helmfile sync, the chart gets installed with the correctly rendered templates.

Any ideas how the user experience could be improved for this use case?

a-hat on Dec 3, 2019

It turned out that the issue was actually our fault; another team member had set disableValidation: true in some releases in our helmfiles, but I was unaware of that. After replacing that configuration with the disableValidationOnInstall: true parameter you introduced in https://github.com/roboll/helmfile/issues/1600#issuecomment-772904291, the incorrect rendering went away. Even with using KubeVersion and without using HELM_DIFF_USE_UPGRADE_DRY_RUN. Thank you!

raxod502-plaid on Jan 25, 2022