✨ Add helm/v2-alpha addressing all feedbacks and aiming maintainability. Deprecated helm/v1-alpha in favor of helm/v2-alpha

[camilamacedo86]

Introduce helm/v2-alpha Plugin: Dynamic Helm Chart Generation

This PR introduces a completely rewritten Helm plugin (helm/v2-alpha) that dynamically generates Helm charts based on the actual kustomize output from make build-installer, replacing the previous hardcoded template approach in helm/v1-alpha.

The existing helm/v1-alpha plugin used static templates that didn't reflect user customizations (environment variables, labels, annotations, security contexts, etc.) made in their kustomize configuration. This led to inconsistencies between kubectl apply -f dist/install.yaml and helm install.

Key Features

• Dynamic generation: Charts generated from actual kustomize output (dist/install.yaml)
• Smart organization: Resources split into logical directories (metrics/, webhook/, cert-manager/, rbac/, crd/)
• Conditional logic: Only includes resources that actually exist (certManager, webhooks, metrics)
• Individual files: CRDs, RBAC, and certificates as separate files for better maintainability
• Enhanced values.yaml: Dynamic configuration based on detected project features

Changes

• Deprecated Helm v1-alpha in favour of v2
• Add docs and tests for Helm v2
• Update all samples
• Address all feedback raised so far

Documentation

📖 Preview docs: https://deploy-preview-5058--kubebuilder.netlify.app/plugins/available/helm-v2-alpha

How to Review

• Documentation: Check the docs link above for complete feature overview
• Core implementation: Focus on pkg/plugins/optional/helm/v2alpha/ for the actual code changes
• File changes context: Most changes under testdata/ and docs/ are sample updates with helm/v2-alpha
• Test coverage: Comprehensive unit tests added with GitHub workflow integration for e2e testing via Prow
• Play with in your solutions 🙏

Usage

# Generate Helm chart from kustomize output
kubebuilder edit --plugins=helm.kubebuilder.io/v2-alpha

# Custom output directory  
kubebuilder edit --plugins=helm.kubebuilder.io/v2-alpha --output=charts

Closes:

• kubebuilder-helm does not support per resource labels #5051
• target helm chart directory should be configurable #4320
• Generated helm chart should align with other charts from ecosystem #4912
• target helm chart directory should be configurable #4320
• (helm/v1-alpha) Nameprefix is missing in editor/viewer ClusterRoles after scaffolding #4566
• (helm/v1-alpha) --force flag does not update values.yaml when kustomize manager spec has changed #4625
• Helm ServiceAccount scaffolding NIL pointers #4562
• Improve Helm plugin by generating chart from install.yaml (via Kustomize build) #4833
• (helm/v1-alpha) --force flag does not update values.yaml when kustomize manager spec has changed #4625
• 🛠️ add ignore flags for selective scaffolding in edit command #4889

[k8s-ci-robot]

[APPROVALNOTIFIER] This PR is APPROVED

This pull-request has been approved by: camilamacedo86

The full list of commands accepted by this bot can be found here.

The pull request process is described here

Needs approval from an approver in each of these files:

• OWNERS [camilamacedo86]

Approvers can indicate their approval by writing /approve in a comment
Approvers can cancel approval by writing /approve cancel in a comment

[abhijith-darshan]

HI @abhijith-darshan

The args might be a good thought, but I think we could check this one in a follow-up, wdyt?

Sure. Once this is in, I can contribute towards enhancements as well, thanks.

For now, LGTM 🚀

[camilamacedo86]

/retest-required

[pedjak]

nit: could we have a single string here instead of concatenation?

[camilamacedo86]

That would cause the lint check lll fail

[pedjak]

for the future maintenance, would it helpful to move this and similar content into standalone files and use go:embed directive to access it?

[camilamacedo86]

All templates in Kubebuilder are currently done this way. I might not have fully understood the reasoning, but if we decide to change the approach, it would probably make sense to update all places consistently. That said, we’re always open to ideas—feel free to open a PR to propose the change and demonstrate what it would look like.

[pedjak]

I think you can get incorporate this waiting into the previous helm install step by doing something like:

helm install cert-manager jetstack/cert-manager --namespace cert-manager --create-namespace --set crds.enabled=true --wait --timeout 300s
#

[camilamacedo86]

It seems a good idea. 🚀

[camilamacedo86]

/test pull-kubebuilder-e2e-k8s-1-33-0

[camilamacedo86]

We have enough reviews/lgtm so far
Also, to allow contributions on top of those changes we need get this one merged
So, I am letting it move forward.
We have up to the next release to enhance or change what might be required.

[manfredlift]

The args for controller-manager container needs to be templated and available in values.yaml (with defaults or empty [ ] )
Otherwise it won't be possible to dynamically include args.

@camilamacedo86, just tried this out. It seems like also the values for image and resources in manager.yaml are hardcoded (and come from dist/install.yaml) and the ones in values.yaml are not used?

[camilamacedo86]

@manfredlift and @abhijith-darshan

Both scenarios reported are tracked for helm/v2

• Helm/v2 - Check the possibility to use the args from kustomize #5114
• Helm/v2 - Ensure that the values for image and resources came from kustomize #5113

[atanasenko]

@camilamacedo86 This is so much better than v1.
We do have an additional Deployment added to the stack that is basically a web ui accompanying the the operator. However, the helm v2 plugin seems to only support a single Deployment and only the last one encountered, silently ignoring all the rest.

[camilamacedo86]

Hi @atanasenko

Thank you for the report. Please create an issue with the scenario so that we can try to address it.
Could you please add the code and how we reproduce it?