Helm charts in the package registry

DETAILS: Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com, Self-managed, GitLab Dedicated Status: Beta

Introduced in GitLab 14.1.

WARNING: The Helm chart registry for GitLab is under development and isn't ready for production use due to limited functionality. This epic details the remaining work and timelines to make it production ready.

Publish Helm packages in your project's package registry. Then install the packages whenever you need to use them as a dependency.

For documentation of the specific API endpoints that Helm package manager clients use, see the Helm API documentation.

Build a Helm package

Read more in the Helm documentation about these topics:

Authenticate to the Helm repository

To authenticate to the Helm repository, you need either:

A personal access token with the scope set to api.
A deploy token with the scope set to read_package_registry, write_package_registry, or both.
A CI/CD job token.

Publish a package

NOTE: You can publish Helm charts with duplicate names or versions. If duplicates exist, GitLab always returns the chart with the latest version.

Once built, a chart can be uploaded to the desired channel with curl or helm cm-push:

With curl:
```
curl --request POST \
     --form 'chart=@mychart-0.1.0.tgz' \
     --user <username>:<access_token> \
     https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<project_id>/packages/helm/api/<channel>/charts
```
- <username>: the GitLab username or the deploy token username.
- <access_token>: the personal access token or the deploy token.
- <project_id>: the project ID (like 42) or the URL-encoded path of the project (like group%2Fproject).
- <channel>: the name of the channel (like stable).
With the helm cm-push plugin:
```
helm repo add --username <username> --password <access_token> project-1 https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<project_id>/packages/helm/<channel>
helm cm-push mychart-0.1.0.tgz project-1
```
- <username>: the GitLab username or the deploy token username.
- <access_token>: the personal access token or the deploy token.
- <project_id>: the project ID (like 42).
- <channel>: the name of the channel (like stable).

Release channels

You can publish Helm charts to channels in GitLab. Channels are a method you can use to differentiate Helm chart repositories. For example, you can use stable and devel as channels to allow users to add the stable repository while devel charts are isolated.

Use CI/CD to publish a Helm package

To publish a Helm package automated through GitLab CI/CD, you can use CI_JOB_TOKEN in place of the personal access token in your commands.

For example:

image: curlimages/curl:latest

stages:
  - upload

upload:
  stage: upload
  script:
    - 'curl --request POST --user gitlab-ci-token:$CI_JOB_TOKEN --form "chart=@mychart-0.1.0.tgz" "${CI_API_V4_URL}/projects/${CI_PROJECT_ID}/packages/helm/api/<channel>/charts"'

<username>: the GitLab username or the deploy token username.
<access_token>: the personal access token or the deploy token.
<channel>: the name of the channel (like stable).

Install a package

NOTE: When requesting a package, GitLab considers only the 1000 most recent packages created. For each package, only the most recent package file is returned.

To install the latest version of a chart, use the following command:

helm repo add --username <username> --password <access_token> project-1 https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<project_id>/packages/helm/<channel>
helm install my-release project-1/mychart

<username>: the GitLab username or the deploy token username.
<access_token>: the personal access token or the deploy token.
<project_id>: the project ID (like 42).
<channel>: the name of the channel (like stable).

If the repository has previously been added, you may need to run:

helm repo update

To update the Helm client with the most currently available charts.

See Using Helm for more information.

Troubleshooting

The chart is not visible in the package registry after uploading

Check the Sidekiq log for any related errors. If you see Validation failed: Version is invalid, it means that the version in your Chart.yaml file does not follow Helm Chart versioning specifications. To fix the error, use the correct version syntax and upload the chart again.

Support for providing better error messages for package processing errors in the UI is proposed in issue 330515.

`helm push` results in an error

Helm 3.7 introduced a breaking change for the helm-push plugin. You can update the Chart Museum plugin to use helm cm-push.

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