Helm - The package manager for Kubernetes

 Helm is the best way to find, share, and use software built for Kubernetes.

Charts

Helm uses a packaging format called charts. A chart is a collection of files that describe a related set of Kubernetes resources. A single chart might be used to deploy something simple, like a memcached pod, or something complex, like a full web app stack with HTTP servers, databases, caches, and so on.

Charts are created as files laid out in a particular directory tree. They can be packaged into versioned archives to be deployed.

If you want to download and look at the files for a published chart, without installing it, you can do so with helm pull chartrepo/chartname.

This document explains the chart format, and provides basic guidance for building charts with Helm

The Chart File Structure

A chart is organized as a collection of files inside of a directory. The directory name is the name of the chart (without versioning information). Thus, a chart describing WordPress would be stored in a wordpress/ directory.

Inside of this directory, Helm will expect a structure that matches this:

APPLICATION-DEPLOYEMENT-NAME/
  Chart.yaml          # A YAML file containing information about the chart
  LICENSE             # OPTIONAL: A plain text file containing the license for the chart
  README.md           # OPTIONAL: A human-readable README file
  values.yaml         # The default configuration values for this chart
  values.schema.json  # OPTIONAL: A JSON Schema for imposing a structure on the values.yaml file
  charts/             # A directory containing any charts upon which this chart depends.
  crds/               # Custom Resource Definitions
  templates/          # A directory of templates that, when combined with values,
                      # will generate valid Kubernetes manifest files.
  templates/NOTES.txt # OPTIONAL: A plain text file containing short usage notes