PyHelm

Python bindings for the Helm package manager

How to use PyHelm

In order to install a Helm chart using PyHelm, you can perform the following steps:

Loading a chart using ChartBuilder

from pyhelm.chartbuilder import ChartBuilder

chart = ChartBuilder({"name": "nginx-ingress", "source": {"type": "repo", "location": "https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com"}})

This will cause the chart to cloned locally, and any additional use of chart will reference the local copy. You can also used a local chart by using "type": "directory", as well as cloning from a git repo using "type": "git"

Installing a chart

from pyhelm.chartbuilder import ChartBuilder
from pyhelm.tiller import Tiller

tiller = Tiller(TILLER_HOST)
chart = ChartBuilder({"name": "nginx-ingress", "source": {"type": "repo", "location": "https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com"}})
tiller.install_release(chart.get_helm_chart(), dry_run=False, namespace='default')

This snippet will install the nginx-ingress chart on a Kubernetes cluster where Tiller is installed (assuming TILLER_HOST points to a live Tiller instance). Take note that in most Helm installations Tiller isn't accessible in such a manner, and you will need to perform a Kubernetes port-forward operation to access Tiller. The Tiller class supports other operations other than installation, including release listing, release updating, release uninstallation and getting release contents.

Package versions

In order to support multiple versions of Helm versions, which in turn require different gRPC prototypes, we maintain different PyHelm package versions.

Additional Helm versions can be supported as shown in the following section.

Helm gRPC

The helm gRPC libraries are located in the hapi directory. They were generated with the grpc_tools.protoc utility against Helm 2.14. Should you wish to re-generate them you can easily do so:

git clone https://github.com/kubernetes/helm ./helm
python -m grpc_tools.protoc -I helm/_proto --python_out=. --grpc_python_out=. _proto/hapi/chart/*
python -m grpc_tools.protoc -I helm/_proto --python_out=. --grpc_python_out=. _proto/hapi/services/*
python -m grpc_tools.protoc -I helm/_proto --python_out=. --grpc_python_out=. _proto/hapi/release/*
python -m grpc_tools.protoc -I helm/_proto --python_out=. --grpc_python_out=. _proto/hapi/version/*