Today, we’re excited to announce a handful of small new features that complement the recent beta launch of the Replicated SDK for Helm Charts. These updates will make it easier for vendors to experiment with Helm CLI Installations.
Helm Install Instructions for Customers
For vendor releases containing one or more helm charts, you will now be able to get installation instructions a customer can use to directly install Helm charts from your release. To do this, navigate to a customer page and select “Helm Install Instructions”:
These instructions can be used by a customer to log into a registry with their license key and pull any of the helm charts in your release.
Please note that to get the most out of these releases, you should include the Replicated SDK when the chart is installed with the Helm CLI, so that you will get the benefits of Instance Insights for the installation. If you’re using Custom Domains, customers will be able to pull the chart from a domain you control rather than registry.replicated.com.
Creating Helm-Only Releases
In addition to exposing Helm charts in existing KOTS-ready releases, vendors can now also create Helm-only releases. That is, releases that contain nothing except one or more Helm Charts. To create a Helm-only release, simply select the “Helm Only Release” option when creating a release:
You can also create a Helm-only release by using the [.inline] --chart [.inline] flag to the [.inline] replicated release create [.inline] command. The chart will need to be packaged into a [.inline] .tgz [.inline] format with [.inline] helm package [.inline] first.
[.pre] $ replicated release create --chart ./my-chart.tgz --promote Unstable [.pre]
Since they will not be edited in the vendor portal, Helm-only releases will be immutable and will have a slightly different appearance in the release viewer.
Marking Customers as Helm-only
In addition to creating Helm-only releases, vendors now also have the option to create Helm-only customers. A Helm-only customer is one that is only licensed to install your application with the Helm CLI, and will not have access to the KOTS or kURL installation tooling. To create a helm-only customer, simply disable the Enable KOTS Installs checkbox on the customer Manage page:
Next Steps
- Want to learn more about Helm Installations? Check out the Replicated Docs for Helm CLI Installations.
- Found an issue or have a feature request? We’d love to hear from you.
- To learn more about how Replicated is enhancing Helm, sign up now to learn more and join our waitlist.