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Helm Command Cheatsheet 2025

Celebrating 10 years of Helm...

Helm is a tool for managing Charts. Charts are packages of pre-configured Kubernetes resources.

Key Use Cases

  • Find and use popular software packaged as Helm Charts to run in Kubernetes
  • Share your own applications as Helm Charts
  • Create reproducible builds of your Kubernetes applications
  • Intelligently manage your Kubernetes manifest files
  • Manage releases of Helm packages

Popularity & Stats

  • 24.1K+ GitHub Stars
  • 7.2K+ Forks
  • 1000+ Contributors
  • 40K+ Weekly Docker Downloads
  • Used by 65% of Kubernetes users (CNCF Survey 2023)

This cheatsheet provides a quick reference for common Helm commands and configurations.

Basic Commands

Command Description
helm create mychart Initialize a new Helm chart
helm install release-name chart-name Install a chart
helm install release-name chart-name --namespace my-namespace Install a chart in specific namespace
helm install release-name chart-name --values values.yaml Install with custom values
helm upgrade release-name chart-name Upgrade a release
helm upgrade --install release-name chart-name Install or upgrade if exists
helm rollback release-name revision-number Rollback to a previous version
helm list List all releases
helm ls --all-namespaces List releases across all namespaces
helm ls -n namespace List releases in a namespace
helm uninstall release-name Uninstall a release

Repository Management

Command Description
helm repo add repo-name repo-url Add a repository
helm repo update Update repositories
helm repo list List repositories
helm repo remove repo-name Remove a repository
helm search repo chart-name Search in repositories
helm search hub chart-name Search in Artifact Hub

Chart Management

Command Description
helm package chart-path/ Package a chart
helm lint chart-path/ Verify chart
helm show chart chart-name Show chart details
helm show values chart-name Show chart values
helm show all chart-name Show all chart information
helm pull repo-name/chart-name Pull a chart
helm pull repo-name/chart-name --untar Pull and extract a chart

Testing and Debugging

Command Description
helm install release-name chart-name --dry-run --debug Test installation
helm get manifest release-name Get manifest
helm get values release-name Get release values
helm history release-name Get release history
helm status release-name Get release status

Template Commands

Command Description
helm template release-name chart-name Render templates locally
helm template release-name chart-name --values values.yaml Render with values
helm lint chart-path/ Validate templates
helm get manifest release-name Show computed templates

Dependencies

Command Description
helm dependency update chart-path/ Update dependencies
helm dependency list chart-path/ List dependencies
helm dependency build chart-path/ Build dependencies

Chart Structure

File/Directory Purpose
Chart.yaml Chart metadata
values.yaml Default values
values.schema.json Values schema
charts/ Chart dependencies
templates/ Template files
templates/NOTES.txt Usage notes
templates/_helpers.tpl Named templates
templates/deployment.yaml Kubernetes manifests

Environment Values

Command Description
helm install -f values-dev.yaml Install with dev values
helm install -f values-prod.yaml Install with prod values
helm install -f values.yaml -f values-prod.yaml Install with multiple values

Common Configuration Values

Field Description
replicaCount Number of replicas
image.repository Container image repository
image.tag Container image tag
image.pullPolicy Image pull policy
service.type Service type
service.port Service port
resources.limits Resource limits
resources.requests Resource requests
ingress.enabled Enable ingress
ingress.className Ingress class

Further Resources

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