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Helm Diff

helm diff is a Helm plugin that shows differences between a Helm chart's current state in Kubernetes and its new configuration. This is helpful for previewing what changes will happen in a cluster before deploying them, allowing for safer updates by visually inspecting the intended modifications. The plugin highlights added, modified, and deleted resources, making it easier to understand the impact of changes.

How to install​

On a computer with internet access​

helm plugin install https://github.com/databus23/helm-diff

On a computer without internet access​

Assuming that you're working on your Windows workstation in the Outnet you can install the plugin by copying a few files into your HELM_PLUGINS directory.

  • Go to the helm-diff gitlab repo.
  • Clone the helm-diff gitlab repo to your workstation.
  • In the root directory you'll find a directory called tar-gz, cd into this directory.
  • Extract the helm-diff-windows-amd64.tgz
  • Find out what's the HELM_PLUGINS path configured on your computer by running helm env, in the out output you'll find all the helm env vars, copy the path.
  • If the HELM_PLUGINS doesn't exist create it.
  • Create a directory helm-diff under the HELM_PLUGINS path.
  • From the extracted tgz file, copy the bin directory and the plugin.yaml into the HELM_PLUGINS/helm-diff directory.

Now you have helm-diff plugin installed on your Windows workstation.

How to use it​

Assuming that your chart name is foo and your values file name is dev-values.yaml run the following from the Chart directory you wish to upgrade.
helm diff upgrade foo --values dev-values.yaml .
You can also specify multiple values files:
helm diff upgrade foo --values dev-values.yaml --values dev1-values.yaml .
If there's a difference, the output will show all the diffs between the k8s objects which will be modified/create/deleted.

Here's an example of the helm diff output Helm diff