Publish a helm chart using github actions and github pages

2 min read | by Jordi Prats

Having a helm chart released (via an index.yaml) is a convenient way of using it. Combining github actions with github pages we can do it in a serverless fashion

Let's assume we have the test vault helm chart that we want to release using a helm releaser. The github action would look like this:

name: Release Chart on:  push:  branches:  - main jobs:  release:  runs-on: ubuntu-latest  steps:  - name: Checkout  uses: actions/checkout@v4  with:  fetch-depth: 0  - name: Configure Git  run: |  git config user.name "$GITHUB_ACTOR"  git config user.email "$GITHUB_ACTOR@users.noreply.github.com"  - name: Set up Helm  uses: azure/setup-helm@v1  with:  version: v3.5.2  - name: Run chart-releaser  uses: helm/chart-releaser-action@v1.4.0  env:  CR_TOKEN: "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}" 

This is going to create the index.yaml file and post it using github pages. The URL is going to look like this:

Therefore, for pet2cattle/helm-testvault, we can add the helm repo hosted using github pages with the following command:

helm repo add testvault https://pet2cattle.github.io/helm-testvault/ 

This action assumes the helm chart is going to be under the charts directory (it's actually looking for the Chart.yaml) with the following structure: charts/chartname/Chart.yaml

If we have the chart somewhere else, we must include a charts_dir input in the workflow:

 - name: Run chart-releaser  uses: helm/chart-releaser-action@v1.4.0  with:  charts_dir: another_dir  env:  CR_TOKEN: "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}" 

The only consideration is that it won't pick up charts that are stored directly under the charts_dir directory: The chartname directory must exists

Posted on 31/10/2022