The helm-controller is a Kubernetes operator, allowing one to declaratively manage Helm chart releases. It is part of a composable GitOps toolkit and depends on source-controller to acquire the Helm charts from Helm repositories.

The desired state of a Helm release is described through a Kubernetes Custom Resource named HelmRelease. Based on the creation, mutation or removal of a HelmRelease resource in the cluster, Helm actions are performed by the operator.

• Watches for HelmRelease objects and generates HelmChart objects
• Supports HelmChart artifacts produced from HelmRepository, GitRepository and Bucket sources
• Fetches artifacts produced by source-controller from HelmChart and OCIRepository objects
• Watches HelmChart objects for revision changes (including semver ranges for charts from HelmRepository sources)
• Performs automated Helm actions, including Helm tests, rollbacks and uninstalls
• Offers extensive configuration options for automated remediation (rollback, uninstall, retry) on failed Helm install, upgrade or test actions
• Runs Helm install/upgrade in a specific order, taking into account the depends-on relationship defined in a set of HelmRelease objects
• Reports Helm release statuses (alerting provided by notification-controller)
• Built-in Kustomize compatible Helm post renderer, providing support for strategic merge, JSON 6902 and images patches
• Supports detecting and correcting in-cluster changes compared to the desired state of the Helm release

• Get started with Flux
• Manage Helm Releases
• Setup Notifications

HelmRelease API