Install Helm CLI

Kubernetes Helm

Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes that packages multiple Kubernetes resources into a single logical deployment unit called Chart.

Helm is a tool that streamlines installing and managing Kubernetes applications. Think of it like apt/yum/homebrew for Kubernetes. We will use Helm during the workshop to install other components out from the list of available charts.

Helm helps you to:

  • Achieve a simple (one command) and repeatable deployment
  • Manage application dependency, using specific versions of other application and services
  • Manage multiple deployment configurations: test, staging, production and others
  • Execute post/pre deployment jobs during application deployment
  • Update/rollback and test application deployments

Install the Helm CLI

Before we can get started configuring Helm, we’ll need to first install the command line tools that you will interact with. To do this, run the following:

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/master/scripts/get-helm-3 | bash

We can verify the version

helm version --short

Let’s configure our first Chart repository. Chart repositories are similar to APT or yum repositories that you might be familiar with on Linux, or Taps for Homebrew on macOS.

Download the stable repository so we have something to start with:

helm repo add stable https://charts.helm.sh/stable/
helm repo update

Once this is installed, we will be able to list the charts you can install:

helm search repo stable

Finally, let’s configure Bash completion for the helm command:

helm completion bash >> ~/.bash_completion
. /etc/profile.d/bash_completion.sh
. ~/.bash_completion
source <(helm completion bash)

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