Helm is the package manager for Kubernetes.
It allows configuring, installing, upgrading, deleting, and monitoring Kubernetes' deployments.
Downloading Helm:
https://github.com/helm/helm/releases
- Windows: zip archive contains "helm.exe" file
- macOS, Linux: gzipped tar archive (.tar.gz) contains "helm" file
To decide the binaries to downlaod, run this command "
uname -m":
- armv5 ==> armv5
- armv6 ==> armv6
- armv7 ==> arm
- aarch64 ==> arm64
- x86 ==> 386
- x86_64 ==> amd64
- i686 ==> 386
- i386 ==> 386
For example, for Linux x86_64, download:
https://get.helm.sh/helm-v3.17.3-linux-amd64.tar.gz
To uncopmress the tar.gz file:
Besides the binary file helm, the download archive file contains also the files README.md and LICENSE.
Installing Helm:
- The binary file (helm) is the only file you need to use Helm.
- It can be put in any folder on your system.
- On macOS/Linux you might need to mark it as an executable: chmod +x ./helm-v3.17.3-linux-amd64/linux-amd64/helm
- Move helm to /usr/local/bin/: sudo mv ./helm-v3.17.3-linux-amd64/linux-amd64/helm /usr/local/bin/helm
"
helm" is the command line-tool of Helm (written in Go language).
You need to distinguish between the version of the
helm command-line client and the version of the helm chart:
- Helm version: 3
- Helm Chart version: 2
To test the Helm installation, run the command:
To connect to Kubernetes cluster (Kubernetes API server),
Helm uses, by default, the same configuration file used by
kubectl (the Kubernetes command-line client).
Helm will read the
kubectl configuration file either from:
- the environment variable KUBECONFIG.
- or from the default locations where the kubectl configuration file is stored (.i.e. $HOME/.kube/config).
You can override the location of the configuration file either by:
- setting the environment variable HELM_KUBECONTEXT.
- or using the command-line flag --kube-context.