Why helm doesn't use a general purpose programming language for defining resources?

• helm

  206 26,081 8.9 Go

  The Kubernetes Package Manager

  

I asked myself the same question, a few years ago, (BTW Great post from Matt!) Helm has been discussing the possibility to plugin other templating languages other than text/template for quite some time eg. #6184 So far, nobody did a serious move to provide an implementation.

• Pulumi

  178 19,976 9.9 Go

  Pulumi - Infrastructure as Code in any programming language. Build infrastructure intuitively on any cloud using familiar languages 🚀

  

Have you tried Pulumi ?

• InfluxDB

  www.influxdata.com featured

  Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  

• carvel

  10 352 9.1 HTML

  Carvel provides a set of reliable, single-purpose, composable tools that aid in your application building, configuration, and deployment to Kubernetes. This repo contains information regarding the Carvel open-source community.

  

+1 been using ytt and kapp, the Carvel stuff in its entirety is a much better experience than helm (it can keep helm to help migration, or deal with the fact everyone still distributes in helm).

• cue

  109 4,765 9.8 Go

  The home of the CUE language! Validate and define text-based and dynamic configuration

  

This is where cue fits nicely in my opinion. https://cuelang.org/

• dhall-kubernetes

  9 609 4.2 Dhall

  Typecheck, template and modularize your Kubernetes definitions with Dhall

  

Not Helm directly, but does something like Dhall fit your question? https://github.com/dhall-lang/dhall-kubernetes

• helm-x

  4 170 0.0 Go

  Treat any Kustomization or K8s manifests directory as a Helm chart

We are already very close to that IMHO. The functionality is not yet built in Helm. If you look at CDK8s + Helm X you can already do it for your team. The only limitation is that you can't publish that as a chart.

• design-proposals-archive

  5 154 2.9 Makefile

  Discontinued Archive of Kubernetes Design Proposals

  

I will point out that the shortcomings of parameterized templates are actually very well-understood by the Kubernetes community: see Declarative application management in Kubernetes and The Rationale behind kpt. Helm has significant mindshare because it was first to the scene / has network effects, it solves real problems, and presents a decent UX for chart users. It sits in this obnoxious local optimum of "good enough on Day 1, hot garbage nightmare on Day 100".

• SaaSHub

  www.saashub.com featured

  SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

  

• vscode-ytt

  1 17 10.0

  Visual Studio Code extension for working with ytt yaml files

  

They do have an IDE integration, but it's mostly for syntax highlighting than any sort of programming assistance. ytt syntax highlighting for Visual Studio Code

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