Helmizer

• About
• Usage
• Configuration
  • Installation
    • Linux
    • Windows
  • Run
  • Examples
• Kustomize Options

---

About

TLDR

Generates a kustomization.yaml file, optionally providing the ability to run commands (e.g. helm template) on your OS prior to generating a kustomization, and will compose the kustomization fields that deal with file paths (e.g. resources) with glob-like features, as well as pass-through all other kustomization configuration properties. No need to explicitly enumerate every file to be 'kustomized' individually.

Takes a config file as input, telling Helmizer if you want to run any commands. Then if you give it one or more directories for crds/components/patchesStrategicMerge/resources, it will recursively lookup all of those files and render them into your kustomization.yaml. Want to skip including one file like templates/secret.yaml? Just add the relative path to helmizer.ignore to helmizer.yaml.

---

Thou shall not glob, said the kustomize developers (thus far).

Helmizer takes various inputs from a YAML config file (helmizer.yaml by default) and constructs a kustomization file from those inputs. It can run a sequence of commands before rendering the kustomization file.

Instead of manually entering the paths to resources in a kustomization file, this tool will walk any number of directories containing resources and populate the kustomization with these resources. Or only pull in individual files, it's your choice.

I began transitioning my helm charts to local manifests via helm template, which were then applied to the cluster separately via Kustomize. I didn't enjoy having to manually manage the relative paths to files in the kustomization. I wanted a repeatable process to generate Kubernetes manifests from a helm chart, and tack on any patches or related resources later with a single command. Thus, helmizer. But Helm is in no way required to make this tool useful - have it walk your raw manifests as well. This is just a wrapper that allows combining steps, and glob-like behavior, to managing kustomization.yaml files.

Usage

Usage: helmizer [--log-format LOG-FORMAT] [--log-level LOG-LEVEL] [--log-colors] [--api-version API-VERSION] [--dry-run] [--kustomization-path KUSTOMIZATION-PATH] [--quiet-commands] [--quiet-helmizer] [--skip-commands] [--skip-postcommands] [--skip-precommands] [--stop-on-error] CONFIGFILEPATH

Positional arguments:
  CONFIGFILEPATH         Path to Helmizer config file

Options:
  --log-format LOG-FORMAT
                         Set log format: plain or JSON [default: plain]
  --log-level LOG-LEVEL, -l LOG-LEVEL
                         Set log level: INFO, DEBUG, ERROR, WARNING [default: INFO]
  --log-colors           Enables color in the log output [default: true]
  --api-version API-VERSION
                         Set the API version for the kustomization.yaml file [default: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1]
  --dry-run              Don't write the kustomization.yaml file. This does not affect pre/post commands [default: false]
  --kustomization-path KUSTOMIZATION-PATH
                         Set the path to write kustomization.yaml file [default: .]
  --quiet-commands, -q   Don't output stdout/stderr for pre and post command sequences [default: false]
  --quiet-helmizer       Don't output logs or the kustomization [default: false]
  --skip-commands        Skip executing pre and post command sequences [default: false]
  --skip-postcommands    Skip executing the post-command sequence [default: false]
  --skip-precommands     Skip executing the pre-command sequence [default: false]
  --stop-on-error        Stop execution on first error [default: true]
  --help, -h             display this help and exit
  --version              display version and exit

Configuration

• Example helmizer.yaml config file. The helm command is invoked before the content for kustomization.yaml is generated. Any number of commands can be added here.

helmizer:
  apiVersion: "kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1"
  dryRun: false
  ignore: []
  kustomizationPath: "."
  preCommands:
    - command: helm
      args:
        - '-n'
        - cert-manager
        - template
        - cert-manager
        - '--output-dir'
        - .
        - '--include-crds'
        - '--skip-tests'
        - '--version'
        - 1.14.3
        - jetstack/cert-manager
  postCommands:
    - command: pre-commit
      args:
        - run
        - '-a'
        - '||'
        - 'true'
  quietCommands: false
  skipCommands: false
  skipPostCommands: false
  skipPreCommands: false
kustomize:
  commonAnnotations: {}
  commonLabels: {}
  configMapGenerator: []
  crds: []
  generatorOptions: {}
  images: []
  namePrefix: []
  namespace: ""
  nameSuffix: []
  openapi: {}
  patches: []
  patchesJson6902: []
  patchesStrategicMerge: []
  replacements: []
  replicas: []
  resources: []
  secretGenerator: []
  vars: []

Click to expand this bit to see the above, but with explanations for the configuration properties

helmizer:
  dryRun: false  # optional - if true, does not write to a filesystem
  ignore: []  # optional - list of files/directories to ignore
  kustomizationPath: "yaml"  # optional - 'yaml' or 'yml'
  preCommands:  # optional - list of commands/args executed serially. Inherits your $PATH
    - command: "helm"
      args:
        - "-n"
        - "cert-manager"
        - "template"
        - "cert-manager"
        - --output-dir
        - '.'
        - --include-crds
        - --skip-tests
        - --version
        - 1.14.3
        - jetstack/cert-manager
  postCommands:  # optional - list of commands/args executed serially. Inherits your $PATH
    - command: "pre-commit"
      args:
        - 'run'
        - '-a'
        - '||'
        - 'true'
  quietCommands: false
  skipCommands: false
  skipPostCommands: false
  skipPreCommands: false
  stopOnError: true
kustomize:  # this is essentially an overlay for your eventual kustomization.yaml
  commonAnnotations: {}
  commonLabels: {}
  configMapGenerator: []
  crds: []
  generatorOptions: {}
  images: []
  namePrefix: []
  namespace: ""
  nameSuffix: []
  openapi: {}
  patches: []
  patchesJson6902: []
  patchesStrategicMerge: []
  replacements: []
  replicas: []
  resources: []
  secretGenerator: []
  vars: []

Installation

Linux

curl -L "https://github.com/DaemonDude23/helmizer/releases/download/v0.15.0/helmizer_0.15.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz" -o helmizer.tar.gz && \
tar -xzf helmizer.tar.gz helmizer && \
sudo mv helmizer /usr/local/bin/ && \
rm helmizer.tar.gz && \
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/helmizer

Windows

1. Download the Windows version.
2. Untar it and put it in your `$PATH``.

Run

For greater detail on running from examples (they assumes you've ran helm template, see the resource example)

Input file:

helmizer:
  preCommands:
    - command: "helm"
      args:
        - "-n"
        - "cert-manager"
        - "template"
        - "cert-manager"
        - --output-dir
        - '.'
        - --include-crds
        - --skip-tests
        - --version
        - 1.14.3
        - jetstack/cert-manager
kustomize:
  namespace: cert-manager
  resources:
    - ./cert-manager/

Helmize-ify it:

helmizer ./examples/resources/helmizer.yaml

Output - enumerating the files within the specified directory:

apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
namespace: cert-manager
resources:
  - cert-manager/cainjector-deployment.yaml
  - cert-manager/cainjector-rbac.yaml
  - cert-manager/cainjector-serviceaccount.yaml
  - cert-manager/deployment.yaml
  - cert-manager/rbac.yaml
  - cert-manager/service.yaml
  - cert-manager/serviceaccount.yaml
  - cert-manager/startupapicheck-job.yaml
  - cert-manager/startupapicheck-rbac.yaml
  - cert-manager/startupapicheck-serviceaccount.yaml
  - cert-manager/webhook-deployment.yaml
  - cert-manager/webhook-mutating-webhook.yaml
  - cert-manager/webhook-rbac.yaml
  - cert-manager/webhook-service.yaml
  - cert-manager/webhook-serviceaccount.yaml
  - cert-manager/webhook-validating-webhook.yaml

Examples

With vscode you can utilize the included launch.json to test these more quickly, or reference for your configuration. The cert-manager Helm chart is used for examples for its small scope. Here's another.

• commonAnnotations
• commonLabels
• configMapGenerator
• crds
• generatorOptions
• images
• namePrefix
• namespace
• nameSuffix
• openapi
• patches
• patchesJson6902
• patchStrategicMerge
• replacements
• resources
• secretGenerator
• vars

---

Which looks easier to write/maintain through future chart updates for the Prometheus Operator/kube-prometheus-stack, this helmizer.yaml?

helmizer:
  preCommands:
    - command: "helm"
      args:
        - "-n"
        - "cert-manager"
        - "template"
        - "cert-manager"
        - --output-dir
        - '..'
        - --include-crds
        - --skip-tests
        - --validate
        - --version
        - '1.14.3'
        - --values
        - 'values.yaml'
        - jetstack/cert-manager
kustomize:
  namespace: monitoring
  resources:
    - ./templates/

Or this kustomization.yaml which helmizer generated?

apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
namespace: cert-manager
resources:
  - cert-manager/cainjector-deployment.yaml
  - cert-manager/cainjector-rbac.yaml
  - cert-manager/cainjector-serviceaccount.yaml
  - cert-manager/deployment.yaml
  - cert-manager/rbac.yaml
  - cert-manager/service.yaml
  - cert-manager/serviceaccount.yaml
  - cert-manager/startupapicheck-job.yaml
  - cert-manager/startupapicheck-rbac.yaml
  - cert-manager/startupapicheck-serviceaccount.yaml
  - cert-manager/webhook-deployment.yaml
  - cert-manager/webhook-mutating-webhook.yaml
  - cert-manager/webhook-rbac.yaml
  - cert-manager/webhook-service.yaml
  - cert-manager/webhook-serviceaccount.yaml
  - cert-manager/webhook-validating-webhook.yaml

Kustomize Options

• Kustomize Docs

All kustomize configuration options which are not deprecated by kustomize are supported. See here for reference.