helm-upgrading-to-beta.md

title
Upgrading from Helm operator alpha (<=0.4.0) to beta

Upgrading from Helm operator v0.4.0 to the beta

The Helm operator has undergone changes that necessitate some changes to custom resources, and the deployment of the operator itself.

The central difference is that the Helm operator now works with resources of the kind HelmRelease in the API version flux.weave.works/v1beta1, which have a different format to the custom resources used by the old Helm operator (FluxHelmRelease).

Here are some things to know:

• The new operator will ignore the old custom resources (and the old operator will ignore the new resources).
• Deleting a resource while the corresponding operator is running will result in the Helm release also being deleted
• Deleting a CustomResourceDefinition will also delete all custom resources of that kind.
• If both operators are running and both new and old custom resources defining a release, the operators will fight over the release.

The safest way to upgrade is to avoid deletions and fights by stopping the old operator. Replacing it with the new one (e.g., by changing the deployment, or re-releasing the flux chart with the new version) will have that effect.

Once the old operator is not running, it is safe to deploy the new operator, and start replacing the old resources with new resources. You can keep the old resources around during this process, since the new operator will ignore them.

Upgrading the operator deployment

Using the flux chart

The chart (from v0.5.0-beta, or from this git repo) provides the correct arguments to the operator; to upgrade, do

helm upgrade flux --reuse-values weaveworks/flux --version 0.5.0-beta

The chart will leave the old custom resource definition and custom resources in place. You will need to replace the individual resources, as described below.

Using manifests

You will need to adapt any existing manifest that you use to run the Helm operator. The arguments to the operator executable have changed, since it no longer needs the git repo to be specified (and in some cases, just to tidy up):

• the new operator does not use the --git-url, --git-charts-path, or --git-branch arguments, since the git repo and so on are provided in each custom resource.
• the --queue-worker-count argument has been removed
• the --chart-sync-timeout argument has been removed
• other arguments stay the same

It is entirely valid to run the operator with no arguments, which you may end up with after removing those mentioned above. It will work with the secrets mounted as for the old operator, to start off with, since it expects the SSH key for the git repo to be in the same place.

Once you want to use the new capabilities of the operator -- e.g., releasing charts from Helm repos -- you will probably need to adapt the manifest further. The Helm operator set-up guide and example deployment explain all the details.

Updating custom resources

The main differences between the old resource format and the new are:

• the API version and kind have changed
• you can now specify a chart to release either as a path in a git repo, or a named, versioned chart from a Helm repo

Here is how to change an old resource to a new resource:

• change the apiVersion field to flux.weave.works/v1beta1
• change the kind field to HelmRelease
• you can remove the label chart: from the labels, if it's still there, just to tidy up (it doesn't matter if it's there or not)
• replace the field chartGitPath, with the structure:

chart:
  git: <URL to git repo>
  ref: <optional branch name>
  path: <path from top directory of git repo to chart directory>

• the values, releaseName, and valueFileSecrets can stay as they are.

Note that you now give the git repo URL and branch and full path in each custom resource, rather than supplying arguments to the Helm operator. (As you've been using the old operator, you'll only have one git repo for all charts -- but now you can use different repos for charts!)

As a full example, this is an old resource:

---
apiVersion: helm.integrations.flux.weave.works/v1alpha2
kind: FluxHelmRelease
metadata:
  name: foobar
  namespace: foo-ns
spec:
  chartGitPath: foobar
  values:
    image:
      repository: foobar
      tag: v1

Say the arguments given to the old Helm operator were

args:
  - --git-url=git@example.com:user/repo
  - --git-charts-path=charts
  - --git-branch=master

Then the new custom resource would be:

---
apiVersion: flux.weave.works/v1beta1 # <- change API version
kind: HelmRelease                    # <- change kind
metadata:
  name: foobar
  namespace: foo-ns
spec:
  chart:
    git: git@example.com:user/repo # <- --git-url from operator args
    path: charts/foobar            # <- join --git-chart-path and chartGitPath
  values:
    image:
      repository: foobar
      tag: v1