Upload Helm charts to container registries

The Helm Push plugin streamlines the packaging and distribution of Helm charts to container registries.

For more information about why we created this plugin, go to the Harness blog post Push Helm Charts to Container Registries with Harness CI. For more information about the Helm commands used by this plugin, go to the Helm documentation on Using an OCI-based registry.

For general information about using plugins in CI pipelines, go to Explore plugins and Use Drone plugins.

Supported registries

Currently, this plugin supports pushing Helm charts to Docker Hub and Google Artifact Registry.

If you need to upload Helm charts to another to a Docker-compliant OCI registry that is not supported by this plugin, you can run the necessary helm commands in a Run step or use the Helm Push plugin as a basis to write your own plugin. For more information on the helm commands, go to the Helm documentation on Using an OCI-based registry.

Configure the Helm Push plugin

Upload Helm charts to GAR

To use the Helm Push plugin to upload Helm charts to GAR, add a Plugin step to your CI pipeline. For example:

              - step:
                  type: Plugin
                  name: upload_helm_chart
                  identifier: upload_helm_chart
                  spec:
                    connectorRef: account.harnessImage
                    image: plugins/helm-push:ARCH_TAG
                    settings:
                      registry_url: LOCATION-docker.pkg.dev
                      registry_username: oauth2accesstoken
                      registry_password: <+secrets.getValue("access_token")>
                      chart_path: path/to/chart
                      gcloud_project_id: PROJECT_ID
                      registry_namespace: REPO_ID

To use the Helm Push plugin, configure the Plugin step settings as follows:

Keys	Type	Description	Value example
connectorRef	String	Select a Docker connector. Harness uses this connector to pull the plugin image.	account.harnessImage
image	String	Enter plugins/helm-push:ARCH_TAG and replace ARCH_TAG with the relevant architecture tag to use. For a list of available tags, go to the Helm Push plugin README.	plugins/helm-push:linux-amd64
registry_url	String	Base URL for the Docker registry where the packaged chart will be published. For GAR, this must be LOCATION-docker.pkg.dev. Replace LOCATION with your GAR repository's regional or multi-regional location.	us-east4-docker.pkg.dev
registry_username	String	For GAR, this must be oauth2accesstoken	oauth2accesstoken
registry_password	String	Reference to a Harness text secret containing your GAR Helm access token.	<+secrets.getValue("docker_chart_registry_password")>
chart_path	String	Path to the directory containing the Helm chart to upload, relative to the pipeline workspace. The default is /harness (the pipeline workspace root directory).	charts (navigates to /harness/charts)
gcloud_project_id	String	Your Google Cloud project ID	my-project
registry_namespace	String	Your GAR repository name where you want to publish the chart.	my-repo

Upload Helm charts to Docker Hub

To use the Helm Push plugin to upload Helm charts to Docker Hub, add a Plugin step to your CI pipeline. For example:

              - step:
                  type: Plugin
                  name: upload_helm_chart
                  identifier: upload_helm_chart
                  spec:
                    connectorRef: account.harnessImage
                    image: plugins/helm-push:ARCH_TAG
                    settings:
                      registry_url: registry.hub.docker.com
                      registry_username: DOCKER_USERNAME
                      registry_password: <secrets.getValue("docker_pat")>
                      chart_path: path/to/chart
                      registry_namespace: DOCKER_NAMESPACE

To use the Helm Push plugin, configure the Plugin step settings as follows:

Keys	Type	Description	Value example
connectorRef	String	Select a Docker connector. Harness uses this connector to pull the plugin image.	account.harnessImage
image	String	Enter plugins/helm-push:ARCH_TAG and replace ARCH_TAG with the relevant architecture tag to use. For a list of available tags, go to the Helm Push plugin README.	plugins/helm-push:linux-amd64
registry_url	String	Base URL for the Docker registry where the packaged chart will be published. For Docker Hub, this must be registry.hub.docker.com	registry.hub.docker.com
registry_username	String	Username to access your Docker Hub registry	hubuser
registry_password	String	Reference to a Harness text secret containing a Docker Hub personal access token.	<+secrets.getValue("docker_pat")>
chart_path	String	Path to the directory containing the Helm chart to upload, relative to the pipeline workspace. The default is /harness (the pipeline workspace root directory).	charts (navigates to /harness/charts)
registry_namespace	String	The Docker namespace where you want to publish the Helm chart, such as your personal namespace or an org namespace. For more information, go to the Docker documentation on Pushing a Helm chart to Docker Hub.	myorg

tip

You can use variable expressions for plugin settings. For example, registry_username: <+stage.variables.docker_user_name> references a stage variable called DOCKER_USER_NAME.

Build logs and artifact files

When you run the pipeline, you can observe the step logs on the build details page and then find the Helm chart in your container registry.

Optionally, you can use the Artifact Metadata Publisher plugin to publish artifact URLs on the Artifacts tab. This makes it easier to find artifacts associated with specific builds.