Automatically handling multiple charts in one mvn module

[gintautassulskus]

I would like to create a maven module called build-service containing the following charts:

1. artifactory
2. docker-registry
3. jenkins

Is there a way to package and install/uninstall all three charts automatically using the maven helm plugin? I got the impression that the plugin expects a specific chart.
If not, would it make sense to introduce such a functionality? E.g. chartContentsUri could accept an array of URIs, ideally with a wildcard support. That would enable cases such as:

1. Array of paths:

  [ 
    "file:${project.basedir}/src/helm/charts/chart1/",
    "file:${project.basedir}/src/helm/charts/chart2"
  ]

2. Handling of all charts in a directory:
   file:${project.basedir}/src/helm/charts/*

In some instances helm:install could then potentially fail due to a subset of target charts being already installed to the environment. Similarly, helm:uninstall would fail if one of the charts has not been installed. This could be rectified manually or with some pre-settable behavirous, e.g. continueOnFailure.

At the moment I can package artifactory, docker-registry and jenkins in a single chart, but then the management thereof becomes more difficult.

[ljnelson]

Hi; thanks for using the microBean Helm Maven Plugin.

No, I'm not going to support this because you can create as many <execution>s as you want, each with different paths, etc. That's just Maven configuration and I wouldn't want to duplicate that.

[gintautassulskus]

Thanks for the response, @ljnelson.

tl;dr:

A solution is to use a single chart with sub-charts/dependencies. It assigns a release ID for the all the sub-charts, which are then treated as a single deployment.

my use case

The execution tag ties helm plugin execution to a certain phase(s) and makes the build process inflexible.

To give some context: my project contains microservice source code, infrastructure helm charts and documentation:

./src
    /helm/ - helm charts for the infrastructure, required by the microservice
    /main/java/ - microservice java srouces
    /main/fabric8/ - k8s snippets for microservice's docker container
    /main/docs/ - documentation sources

I should then be able run these separately:

1. Install/uninstall helm charts
2. Build microservice's sources
3. Build microservice's docker image and deploy it to k8s

I am just trying to work out a good development workflow model using this plugin.

[ljnelson]

If you want to simply install a helm chart from the Maven command line, you don't need to run a Maven lifecycle phase. You can just invoke the helm:install goal directly (as you can do with any Maven plugin):

mvn helm:install

To answer your original question ("Is there a way to package and install/uninstall all three charts automatically using the maven helm plugin?") you would use normal Maven constructs for that:

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.microbean</groupId>
  <artifactId>helm-maven-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>2.8.2.1.0.4</version>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <id>Build chart 1</id>
      <phase>whatever</phase>
      <goals>
        <goal>install</goal> <!-- or whatever -->
      </goals>
      <configuration>
        <!-- configuration for building chart 1, such as its chartUrl, etc. -->
      </configuration>
    </execution>
    <execution>
      <id>Build chart 2</id>
      <phase>whatever</phase>
      <!-- and so on -->
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>