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Helm CLI Reference

A quick cheat sheet for managing Helm repositories, installing releases, and building custom Helm packages.

📦 Repository Management

# Add external repositories
helm repo add eks https://aws.github.io/eks-charts
helm repo add prometheus-community https://prometheus-community.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update

# List configured repositories
helm repo list

# Search for available charts across added repos
helm search repo prometheus
helm search repo eks/aws-vpc-cni --versions

🚀 Chart Lifecycle: Install, Upgrade & Rollback

# Install a chart into a dedicated namespace (creating namespace if missing)
helm install my-app eks/aws-load-balancer-controller \
  --namespace kube-system \
  --create-namespace \
  --values values.yaml

# Upgrade or install if not present
helm upgrade --install my-app ./my-chart --namespace default

# List all releases across all namespaces
helm list -A

# Roll back to a previous revision
helm history my-app -n default
helm rollback my-app 1 -n default

🛠️ Chart Packaging & OCI Publishing

# 1. Scaffold a new chart structure
helm create myapp

# 2. Lint chart templates for syntax errors
helm lint myapp

# 3. Package chart into .tgz archive
helm package myapp

# 4. Generate index.yaml for static HTTP/GitHub Pages hosting
helm repo index --url https://vettom.pages.dev/demohelmrepo/ --merge index.yaml .