Helm Charts
Package a Kubernetes application as a reusable, parameterized Helm chart, and learn the install / upgrade / rollback workflow that makes Helm the de facto package manager for Kubernetes.
Prerequisites: completion of Deployments, Services, and Ingress; comfort with YAML.
Version note: verified against helm.sh docs, July 2026. Helm v4 (released Nov 2025) is now the current major line; the latest patch is in the v4.2.x series with v4.3.0 slated for September 2026. Helm v3 remains in support mode (bug fixes until July 8 2026, security fixes until November 11 2026) but new projects should start on v4. Run helm version to confirm exactly what you have — Helm ships monthly and this note will go stale fast.
By this point you've hand-written several YAML manifests and re-typed the same image:, replicas:, and label values across Deployment, Service, and Route objects. That's fine for a few files; it falls apart the moment you need the same app deployed to dev, staging, and prod with three different replica counts and image tags, or the moment you want to share your app with someone else.
Helm packages a set of Kubernetes manifests as a chart — a directory of Go-templated YAML plus a single values.yaml file holding the knobs someone can turn without touching the templates. Installing a chart into a cluster creates a release, and every install/upgrade/rollback is tracked as a numbered revision you can inspect or revert to. Helm v4 also moved to true server-side apply for install/upgrade, which reduces the three-way-merge conflicts that plagued some Helm v3 upgrades.
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