Helm Dependency Updater

This project resolves the problem of missing recursive dependency updates in Helm charts. It is a simple tool that can be used to update the dependencies of a Helm chart recursively.

There is an open issue and PR in the Helm project to add this functionality to Helm itself. Until this is resolved, this tool can be used to update the dependencies of a Helm chart recursively. It will be part of the Milestone 3.13.0 which is released on 13th of September 2023.

Install

wget -qO- "https://github.com/signavio/k8s-helm-dep-updater/releases/latest/download/k8s-helm-dep-updater_$(uname -s)_$(uname -m).tar.gz" | tar -C /tmp -xzf- k8s-helm-dep-updater
sudo mv /tmp/k8s-helm-dep-updater /usr/local/bin/k8s-helm-dep-updater

Install Helm Plugin

helm plugin install https://github.com/signavio/k8s-helm-dep-updater.git

Argocd Integration

To activate the helm dep updater we use downloader plugin to activate it. dummy can be anything. Most importantly with the deps:// prefix you can activate the downloader plugin.

project: default
source:
  repoURL: 'https://github.com/signavio/k8s-helm-dep-updater'
  path: charts/umbrella
  targetRevision: main
  helm:
    valueFiles:
      - 'deps://dummy'
destination:
  server: 'https://kubernetes.default.svc'
  namespace: default

To add the plugin to argocd, those are the relevant lines:

repoServer:
  initContainers:
    - name: download-tools
      image: alpine:3
      command: [sh, -c]
      args:
        - |
          mkdir -p /custom-tools/helm-plugins/helm-dep-updater
          wget -qO- "https://github.com/signavio/k8s-helm-dep-updater/releases/latest/download/k8s-helm-dep-updater.tar.gz" | tar -C /custom-tools/helm-plugins/helm-dep-updater -xzf-;
          wget -qO- "https://github.com/signavio/k8s-helm-dep-updater/releases/latest/download/k8s-helm-dep-updater_$(uname -s)_$(uname -m).tar.gz" | tar -C /custom-tools/ -xzf- k8s-helm-dep-updater
    volumeMounts:
      - mountPath: /custom-tools
        name: custom-tools
  env:
  - name: HELM_PLUGINS
    value: /custom-tools/helm-plugins
  # optionally if you want to login to ECR before fetching the charts
  # it expects a comma separated list of secret names
  - name: HELM_DEPS_SECRET_NAMES
    value: helm-ecr-staging,helm-ecr-production
  volumeMounts:
    - mountPath: /custom-tools
      name: custom-tools
    - mountPath: /usr/local/bin/k8s-helm-dep-updater
      name: custom-tools
      subPath: k8s-helm-dep-updater

Usage

helm template . -f deps://dummy