The quick and easy way:
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3 | bash
For alternatives and details, see Installing Helm in the Helm documentation.
helm search hub searches the Artifact Hub for charts from a wide array of providers. For example, to find a chart for the Drupal content management system (CMS)
helm search hub drupal
Returns:
URL CHART VERSION APP VERSION DESCRIPTION
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/bitnami-ak... 11.0.19 9.3.8 Drupal is one of the most versatile open source...
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/bitnami/dr... 11.0.20 9.3.8 Drupal is one of the most versatile open source...
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/cetic/drupal 0.1.0 1.16.0 Drupal is a free and open-source web content ma...
To widen the columns, use --max-col-width plus a number for how wide you want the columns to be:
helm search hub drupal --max-col-width 65
Returns:
URL CHART VERSION APP VERSION DESCRIPTION
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/bitnami-aks/drupal 11.0.19 9.3.8 Drupal is one of the most versatile open source content manage...
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/bitnami/drupal 11.0.20 9.3.8 Drupal is one of the most versatile open source content manage...
https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/cetic/drupal 0.1.0 1.16.0 Drupal is a free and open-source web content management framew...
Like Docker Hub, anyone can publish anything to Artifact Hub. When searching for charts, always start by filtering on "official" charts where the chart publisher owns the software deployed by the packages. If the software you need is not available from an official source, try "verified publishers". While it is no guarantee of quality and security, official and verified publishers are generally more trustworthy.
Regardless of the source, you can (and should) examine the manifests produced by a chart before using it by using the --dry-run option with helm install.
Drupal is available from verified publisher Bitnami which is now part of VMware. A handful of Bitnami developers were among the core contributors who designed the Helm repository system. They have contributed to the establishment of Helm’s best practices for chart development and have written many of the most widely used charts.1
Let's add Bitnami to our local repository list using the information from the Artifact Hub Bitnami Drupal page.
helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
To verify the result:
helm repo list
Search the repo for Drupal charts:
helm search repo drupal
The search command matches on a variety of fields like package name, labels and descriptions. Try some searches to see this in action:
helm search repo "open source"
Search for the term database:
helm search repo database
We can also see which versions exist for a chart:
helm search repo drupal --versions
Pipe the output to the head command to limit the list to the first 10:
helm search repo drupal --versions | head -10
A chart version is the version of the Helm chart. The app version is the version of the application packaged in the chart. Helm uses the chart version to make versioning decisions, such as which package is newest. As we can see in the preceding example, multiple chart versions may contain the same app version.1
Back to Helm overview or forward to Working with Charts.
- Learning Helm by Matt Butcher, Matt Farina, Josh Dolitsky © 2021 O'Reilly Media, Inc.