Workshop Exercise 1.1 - Initializing Helm Chart

Table of Contents

Objective

Step 1 - Helm Chart Structure

Helm charts are simply a collection of files that represent definitions which create or modify resources on a kubernetes cluster. They can contain definitions for mostly anything, and usually, contain variables that are templated out when deploying the chart.

The basic structure of a chart is:

name-of-chart/
  Chart.yaml
  values.yaml
  templates/

To quote the helm website:

The templates/ directory is for template files. When Helm evaluates a chart, it will send all of the files in the templates/ directory through the template rendering engine. It then collects the results of those templates and sends them on to Kubernetes.

The values.yaml file is also important to templates. This file contains the default values for a chart. These values may be overridden by users during helm install or helm upgrade.

The Chart.yaml file contains a description of the chart. You can access it from within a template.

Source: https://helm.sh/docs/chart_template_guide/getting_started/

Step 2 - Creating Our Chart Structure

To get started, we’ll create a directory and fill out Chart.yaml.

If you are comfortable with git and have a text editor available to you, feel free to clone your repo and use whatever tools you prefer.

Gitea has a web interface that can also be used for editing files, which will be shown here.

First, let’s create a directory to house our chart, and fill out Chart.yaml. In the Gitea web interface, select “New File”. To add a directory, simply type the desired name of the directory, then put in a forward slash: /. Start Chart Yaml

Then, within that new directory, name the file Chart.yaml and enter the following information.

apiVersion: v2
name: uaexpert
description: A chart to install and configure UA Expert
type: application
version: 1.0.0
appVersion: "1.0.0"

Populate Chart Yaml

Esure you save the file, or push it to the repo if working within another editor.

Note:

You will interact with Gitea as a student, athough you may see “instructor” as the user on a commit in your repo. This is just how the workshop is provisioned - all commits going forward will be done as your student user.

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