Helm Charts

This repository contains Helm charts. The associated codes are stored in Github. The associated artifacts are stored in Github pages.

I. Configuration of the repository

1. Activate Github Pages on the repo:

• Create gh-pages branch:

git checkout -b gh-pages
git commit -m "Github pages branch" --allow-empty
git push --set-upstream origin gh-pages

• Go to Github Pages section from your repository following Settings > Pages
• Choose Deploy from a branch and choose gh-pages

2. Create a personal token

• Click on your GitHub avatar
• Go to Settings > Developer settings > Personal access tokens > Tokens (classic)
• Create a new classic token with repo and write:packages permissions

3. Define CI token

• Go to the repository's settings
• Open Secrets and variables > Acions
• Create a new repository secret named CR_TOKEN with your personal token as the value

4. Create a helm chart

Define in helm chart in the charts folder

5. Create the CI

Create a GitHub Actions Workflow .github/workflows/release.yml in the main branch and add the following configuration. This will turn your repository into a self-hosted Helm Chart repository. With every push to the main branch, it will check the chart, and if there is a new chart version, it will create a corresponding GitHub release, add Helm chart artifacts to the release, and create a deployment that will be hosted on GitHub Pages.

name: Release Charts

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  release:
    permissions:
      contents: write
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0

      - name: Configure Git
        run: |
          git config user.name "$GITHUB_ACTOR"
          git config user.email "[email protected]"

      - name: Install Helm
        uses: azure/setup-helm@v4
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: "${{ secrets.CR_TOKEN }}"

      - name: Run chart-releaser
        uses: helm/[email protected]
        env:
          CR_TOKEN: "${{ secrets.CR_TOKEN }}"

II. Verifications

• On the repository, verify multiple things
  • Click in Actions and verify the pipelines has been executed and are green
  • Switch to gh-pages and verify a index.yaml file has been created
  • Look at Releases section to verify it contains a release of your chart
  • Look at Deployments section to verify it contains a deployment of your chart
  • Verify the URL https://<user>.github.io/helm_charts/ points to a github page exposing the readme
  • Verify the URL https://<user>.github.io/helm_charts/index.yaml exposes the release's metadata

III. Deployment of a chart

1. Configure and deploy a Kubernetes cluster

You can for example deploy a small cluster with Civo

See: https://github.com/veben/civo_k8s_easy_cluster/blob/main/readme.md

2. Install Helm

You need helm to manage the chart. You can follow the official installation link.

3. Deploy Mario Bros helm chart

• Add the repository:

helm repo add helm_charts https://veben.github.io/helm_charts/

• Perform an helm update to fetch latest charts

helm repo update

• Search for the charts contained in the repository

helm search repo helm_charts

• Install the chart on your cluster

helm upgrade --install mario-bros helm_charts/mario-bros