Getting started

To get started using Helm with Release, you'll need to add a few files to your repository.

Create the following files:

.release.yaml
.release/application_template.yaml
.release/environment_variables.yaml

The .release.yaml file

The .release.yaml file is loaded during application creation. It defines where Release will find the default Application Template and environment variables to use to create an application.

The .release.yaml file could look something like this:

application_template: .release/application_template.yaml
environment_variables: .release/environment_variables.yaml

The Application Template file

The application-template.yaml file is the default Application Template generated when you create an application. The Application Template is also used for deployment in GitOps-enabled applications.

An Application Template that deploys Elasticsearch via Helm would look something like this:

---
app: elasticsearch-helm
auto_deploy: true
context: release-handsup-us-east-1
domain: elasticsearch-helm.rls.sh
mode: development
repo_name: awesome-release/elasticsearch-helm
environment_templates:
- name: ephemeral
- name: permanent
resources:
  cpu:
    limits: 1000m
    requests: 100m
  memory:
    limits: 1Gi
    requests: 100Mi
  replicas: 1
charts:
- name: elasticsearch
  add: elastic
  repo_url: https://helm.elastic.co
  directory: elasticsearch
  values: 
  - values.yaml
workflows:
- name: setup
  parallelize:
  - step: elasticsearch
    tasks:
    - charts.elasticsearch
- name: patch
  parallelize:
  - step: elasticsearch
    tasks:
    - charts.elasticsearch

The Environment Variables file

The environment-variables.yaml file defines your application's default environment variables. These environment variables will be passed to your Helm charts and are used to populate your Helm values.yaml file.

Here is an example environment-variables.yaml file with a username and password that can be consumed by your Helm values.yaml file:

---
defaults:
- key: ELASTICSEARCH_USERNAME
  value: elastic
  secret: false
- key: ELASTICSEARCH_PASSWORD
  value: supersecret
  secret: true
services: {}

Once you have created these files and checked them in to your source control repository, you are ready to create an application. See Create an application to learn more about how to make an application in Release.