How to deploy toolkit components programatically i.e. using "helm install" ? about helm-controller

[hiddeco]

Are you only interested in running the helm-controller (and source-controller) to drive automated Helm releases, or do you want the "GitOps experience" as well (which requires kustomize-controller)?

[kiich]

Hey @hiddeco
We are currently looking just to use helm-controller and source-controller for now - so no gitops experience - we are currently using helm-operator and looking to replicate what we do there which is helm install.

After having further look though, we've found https://github.com/fluxcd/helm-controller/tree/main/config which seems to have the manifests files - are these what flux install --export produces? Can we just helm package these up (with some additional helm chart files of course)?

[hiddeco]

Yes, that is indeed what you probably want to do. To get an idea how the manifests are build, refer to the following:

https://github.com/fluxcd/helm-controller/blob/main/Makefile#L29-L30

https://github.com/fluxcd/helm-controller/blob/main/Makefile#L37-L39

I would be cautious with deploying the Custom Resource Definitions using Helm however, as you may know that Helm's lifecycle of those resources is not the best, and additions to the definitions MAY be made for MINOR releases.

[kiich]

Thanks for your recommendation @hiddeco - we shall refer to the lines.
And thanks for the heads up on CRD via helm - we used to do this via the crd-install hook in helm2 but good to know other approaches in helm 3. Both to be fair sounds like another layer to worry about so we might end up going via the flux cli in the end (which i assume handles these dependencies correctly?).

But it's good to get the full picture - thanks again. Closing this.