FLUX CD · SECTION 3 · LECTURE 2

Deploying applications using Flux CD with Git as the Helm chart source

Section 3, Lecture 2, from the Flux CD course by DevCloudLab.

What you’ll learn

Deploy a Helm chart from a Git repository using a HelmRelease that sources straight from a GitRepository
Distinguish a HelmRelease’s own reconciliation interval from its chart’s interval
Scaffold a Helm chart with helm create and enable Ingress in its values.yaml
Commit a HelmRelease manifest to the cluster’s bootstrap path and trigger reconciliation with flux reconcile
Verify a Helm install completed by reading HelmRelease status and waiting for Ready

Overview

In this lecture, you learned how to deploy Helm Chart releases to Kubernetes using Flux CD with Git as the source of truth. We covered two approaches to Helm Chart installation:

Local Chart Source: Managing your own chart files and deploying directly from a directory path
Package Repository: Using pre-built, tested charts from repositories like Bitnami

We demonstrated the first approach: creating a Helm Chart, storing its source in a Git repository, and letting Flux CD automatically deploy it using a HelmRelease resource.

Key Concepts

Why separate directories?

Flux CD’s Kustomization controller scans the clusters/ directory for Kubernetes manifests
Helm chart files must live in a separate Git repository, or in the Flux repository root outside clusters/ (this lecture uses charts/)
This prevents Flux from attempting to parse Helm templates as raw Kubernetes YAML

HelmRelease Custom Resource

The HelmRelease custom resource tells Flux CD how and when to deploy a Helm Chart:

apiVersion: helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v2
kind: HelmRelease
metadata:
  name: nginx
  namespace: default
spec:
  interval: 1m
  chart:
    spec:
      chart: ./charts/nginx
      sourceRef:
        kind: GitRepository
        name: flux-system
        namespace: flux-system
      interval: 1m

What each field means:

apiVersion: helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v2: Specifies the Helm Toolkit API version for Flux v2
kind: HelmRelease: Tells Flux to hand this manifest to the helm-controller
metadata.name: The name of this Helm release
metadata.namespace: Where the release will be installed
spec.interval: How often Flux checks that the installed release still matches this HelmRelease, and corrects any drift
spec.chart.spec.chart: Path to the Helm chart within the Git repository
spec.chart.spec.sourceRef: Reference to the Git repository source
spec.chart.spec.interval: How often Flux checks the chart source for a new chart

Two Intervals

Understanding the difference is crucial:

HelmRelease interval (spec.interval): How often Flux checks that the installed release still matches this HelmRelease, and corrects any drift. Edits to the HelmRelease file itself reach the cluster through the flux-system Kustomization, like any other file in the repository.
Chart interval (spec.chart.spec.interval): How often Flux checks the chart source. By default, only a new version in Chart.yaml produces a new chart. Editing a template or values.yaml without bumping the version is not picked up. A later lecture shows how to change that with reconcileStrategy.

The two intervals govern different things: one keeps the running release in line with its definition, the other watches for a new chart.

Complete Working Example

Step 1: Create the Helm Chart

mkdir charts
cd charts
helm create nginx

Step 2: Customize Chart Values

Edit charts/nginx/values.yaml to enable Ingress:

ingress:
  enabled: true
  className: "nginx"
  annotations: {}
  hosts:
    - host: ""
      paths:
        - path: /
          pathType: ImplementationSpecific

Step 3: Create the HelmRelease Manifest

Create clusters/my-cluster/nginx-helm-release.yaml:

apiVersion: helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v2
kind: HelmRelease
metadata:
  name: nginx
  namespace: default
spec:
  interval: 1m
  chart:
    spec:
      chart: ./charts/nginx
      sourceRef:
        kind: GitRepository
        name: flux-system
        namespace: flux-system
      interval: 1m

Step 4: Commit and Merge to Main

git checkout -b nginx-helm-release
git add -A
git commit -m "Adding the Nginx Helm chart and creating the Flux CD Helm Release resource"
git push --set-upstream origin nginx-helm-release

Then create and merge the MR on GitLab.

Step 5: Trigger Reconciliation

flux reconcile kustomization flux-system --with-source

Step 6: Verify Deployment

The Helm install takes a few seconds after the reconcile, so wait for the release to become Ready before reading its status:

kubectl wait --for=condition=Ready helmrelease/nginx -n default --timeout=2m
kubectl get helmrelease
kubectl get pods

kubectl get helmrelease then shows READY as True and a status of Helm install succeeded for release default/nginx.v1 with chart nginx@0.1.0. If you run it the instant the reconcile returns, READY is Unknown and the status reads Running 'install' action. That is the install still in progress, not a failure.

You should also see the Nginx pod running, along with a Service and Ingress in the default namespace.

Common Commands

Command	Purpose
`helm create <chart-name>`	Scaffold a new Helm chart with default templates
`kubectl get helmrelease`	List all HelmRelease resources
`kubectl describe helmrelease <name>`	Inspect a HelmRelease and its status
`flux reconcile kustomization flux-system --with-source`	Manually trigger Flux to check for changes
`flux logs --all-namespaces --follow`	View real-time Flux controller logs

Troubleshooting

HelmRelease not creating?

Ensure the MR was merged and reconciliation ran
Check with kubectl get helmrelease -n default
Review events with kubectl describe helmrelease nginx -n default

Chart files not found?

Verify chart directory exists at repository root: git ls-files charts/
Ensure changes are committed and pushed

Helm chart update not detected?

The chart reconciliation interval is the spec.chart.spec.interval you set: 1 minute here
Flux names the generated HelmChart <helmrelease-namespace>-<helmrelease-name>, and creates it in the flux-system namespace. For this lesson that is default-nginx, so a forced check is flux reconcile helmchart default-nginx -n flux-system
List them with flux get helmcharts --all-namespaces if you are not sure of the name