kubectl VS helm

Compare kubectl vs helm and see what are their differences.

kubectl

Issue tracker and mirror of kubectl code (by kubernetes)
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kubectl helm
13 206
2,684 26,013
1.8% 1.1%
9.2 9.0
1 day ago 6 days ago
Go Go
Apache License 2.0 Apache License 2.0
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

kubectl

Posts with mentions or reviews of kubectl. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-05-02.
  • What are these orphaned PVC objects?
    1 project | /r/kubernetes | 6 May 2023
    Check https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl/issues/151
  • Setting kubectl context via env var
    6 projects | /r/kubernetes | 2 May 2023
    I have read this issue, and up to now it seems not possible to change the kubectl context via an env var: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl/issues/1154
  • Deciding between Rust or Go for desktop applications
    9 projects | /r/golang | 8 Apr 2023
    However, I would encourage people to take a look at what the code looks like before assuming the Go developer experience on this was positive. Bear in mind that's just the top level kubectl command and some helper functions, the subcommand definitions take up a several more files split into a few more packages. Then you're still not even done, because code that uses the parsed flags still has to redundantly check things that couldn't be enforced at the type level, something Go folks like to pretend is a good thing for some reason.
  • Recommendations on file/dir/module structure, common dependencies, and/or anti-patterns for writing CLI tool in Rust
    12 projects | /r/rust | 18 Mar 2023
    kubectl is for sure battle tested, but it involves very Kubernetes specific implementations and is going to be too complicated for the first pointer
  • Recommendations on building a simple DSL REPL?
    5 projects | /r/golang | 18 Mar 2023
  • Why Go and Not Rust?
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 27 Jan 2023
    > context.Background() is typically only used when one doesn’t care about the result. If you did care about the result, you should be passing the parent context to preserve the circuit breaker timeout in case the operation takes too long.

    Not necessarily. You would use context.Background in a test situation. It's also commonly used for short-lived applications like a CLI invocation. You can see kubectl uses context.Background quite a lot: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl/search?q=context.backg...

    > I think the level of pain you experience from mutable references in Rust depends on if you’re coming from an OOP or FP background. I have a FP background and so the patterns I use to build code already greatly restrict mutation. You can usually change code that updates data immutably (creating a new copy of it) with mutable code in rust because the control flow of your program already involves passing that new version back to the caller which also satisfies the borrow checker in most situations.

    There has to be a better solution to needlessly copying data.

  • kubectl - Create PV/PVC
    1 project | /r/kubernetes | 6 Nov 2022
    This is particularly useful for academic purposes, and makes somehow convinient to get the yaml template of k8s objects. I was looking for this as well due to an upcoming ckad test i have. Unfourtunately due to not being considered best practice the request for it was dismissed. https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl/issues/1073
  • Must `kubectl apply` twice to allow CRD usage?
    1 project | /r/kubernetes | 6 May 2022
    I see, apologies, I did misunderstand. This is actually a known race condition between kubectl (or even helm, or any Kube API client) issuing the requests to deploy CRs that depend on CRDs while those CRDs are still being installed on the API server. Simply put, kubectl makes these requests too quickly. There is no solution to this currently aside from deploying CRDs separately from the resources they expose. See this kubectl issue: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl/issues/1117, and there are some links in the comments to other issues echoing the same problem in helm and elsewhere.
  • What's the number one annoyance that drives you crazy about Kubernetes?
    7 projects | /r/kubernetes | 25 Jan 2022
    Go add --no-really-all if you really want it: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl
  • How to change a POD label via client-go?
    1 project | /r/kubernetes | 30 Sep 2021
    You could take a look at how kubectl actually does it: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubectl/blob/master/pkg/cmd/label/label.go

helm

Posts with mentions or reviews of helm. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-22.
  • Kubernetes CI/CD Pipelines
    3 projects | dev.to | 22 Apr 2024
    Applying Kubernetes manifests individually is problematic because files can get overlooked. Packaging your applications as Helm charts lets you version your manifests and easily repeat deployments into different environments. Helm tracks the state of each deployment as a "release" in your cluster.
  • deploying a minio service to kubernetes
    3 projects | dev.to | 8 Apr 2024
    helm
  • How to take down production with a single Helm command
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 4 Apr 2024
    Explanation here: https://github.com/helm/helm/issues/12681#issuecomment-19593...

    Looks like it's a bug in Helm, but actually isn't Helm's fault, the issue was introduced by Fedora Linux.

  • Building a VoIP Network with Routr on DigitalOcean Kubernetes: Part I
    2 projects | dev.to | 4 Mar 2024
    Helm (Get from here https://helm.sh/)
  • The 2024 Web Hosting Report
    37 projects | dev.to | 20 Feb 2024
    It’s also well understood that having a k8s cluster is not enough to make developers able to host their services - you need a devops team to work with them, using tools like delivery pipelines, Helm, kustomize, infra as code, service mesh, ingress, secrets management, key management - the list goes on! Developer Portals like Backstage, Port and Cortex have started to emerge to help manage some of this complexity.
  • Deploying a Web Service on a Cloud VPS Using Kubernetes MicroK8s: A Comprehensive Guide
    4 projects | dev.to | 20 Feb 2024
    Kubernetes orchestrates deployments and manages resources through yaml configuration files. While Kubernetes supports a wide array of resources and configurations, our aim in this tutorial is to maintain simplicity. For the sake of clarity and ease of understanding, we will use yaml configurations with hardcoded values. This method simplifies the learning process but isn’t ideal for production environments due to the need for manual updates with each new deployment. Although there are methods to streamline and automate this process, such as using Helm charts or bash scripts, we’ll not delve into those techniques to keep the tutorial manageable and avoid fatigue — you might be quite tired by that point!
  • Deploy Kubernetes in Minutes: Effortless Infrastructure Creation and Application Deployment with Cluster.dev and Helm Charts
    3 projects | dev.to | 17 Feb 2024
    Helm is a package manager that automates Kubernetes applications' creation, packaging, configuration, and deployment by combining your configuration files into a single reusable package. This eliminates the requirement to create the mentioned Kubernetes resources by ourselves since they have been implemented within the Helm chart. All we need to do is configure it as needed to match our requirements. From the public Helm chart repository, we can get the charts for common software packages like Consul, Jenkins SonarQube, etc. We can also create our own Helm charts for our custom applications so that we don’t need to repeat ourselves and simplify deployments.
  • Kubernets Helm Chart
    1 project | dev.to | 13 Feb 2024
    We can search for charts https://helm.sh/ . Charts can be pulled(downloaded) and optionally unpacked(untar).
  • Introduction to Helm: Comparison to its less-scary cousin APT
    2 projects | dev.to | 9 Feb 2024
    Generally I felt as if I was diving in the deepest of waters without the correct equipement and that was horrifying. Unfortunately to me, I had to dive even deeper before getting equiped with tools like ArgoCD, and k8slens. I had to start working with... HELM.
  • 🎀 Five tools to make your K8s experience more enjoyable 🎀
    4 projects | dev.to | 15 Jan 2024
    Within the architecture of Cyclops, a central component is the Helm engine. Helm is very popular within the Kubernetes community; chances are you have already run into it. The popularity of Helm plays to Cyclops's strength because of its straightforward integration.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing kubectl and helm you can also consider the following projects:

robusta - Kubernetes observability and automation, with an awesome Prometheus integration

crossplane - The Cloud Native Control Plane

kubernetes - Production-Grade Container Scheduling and Management

kubespray - Deploy a Production Ready Kubernetes Cluster

client-go - Go client for Kubernetes.

Packer - Packer is a tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration.

cli - GitHub’s official command line tool

krew - 📦 Find and install kubectl plugins

Mattermost - Mattermost is an open source platform for secure collaboration across the entire software development lifecycle..

skaffold - Easy and Repeatable Kubernetes Development

cobra - A Commander for modern Go CLI interactions

dapr-demo - Distributed application runtime demo with ASP.NET Core, Apache Kafka and Redis on Kubernetes cluster.