Maybe this will finally break me of my habit of using helm charts, period.
replies(4):
Sometimes the limitations of kustomize annoy me, but we find ways to live with them
- Makes it possible to go from zero to fully running k8s integrated components in 5 seconds by just running 'helm install --repo https://example.com/charts/ mynginx nginx' (very useful: https://artifacthub.io/)
- Gives the ability to transactionally apply k8s configs, and un-apply them if there is a failure along the way (atomic rollbacks)
- Stores copies/versions/etc of each installation in the server so you have metadata for troubleshooting/operations/etc without having to keep it in some external system in a custom way.
- Allows a user who doesn't know anything about K8s to provide some simple variables to customize the installation of a bunch of K8s resources.
- Is composeable, has templates, etc.
So basically Helm has a lot of features, while Kustomize has... one. Very different purposes I think. You can also use both at the same time.
Personally I think Helm's atomic deployment feature is well worth it. I also love how easy it is to install charts. It feels a bit like magic.
Realistically, a plain helm install without any values rarely if ever gives you the deployment you need, so you have to study the chart anyways.
> rollback on failure
This is hardly unique to helm.
> history metadata without (...) some external system
In 2025 you should probably be using gitops anyways, in which case the git repo is your history.
works for me most of the time
> This is hardly unique to helm.
So what? The guy was asking what is nice about Helm vs Kustomize. Does Kustomize have rollbacks?
> In 2025 you should probably be using gitops
Gitops is literally just "hey I have some configs in Git and I run some command based on a checkout", i.e. infrastructure as code in a git repo. Gitops does not track live server metadata and deployment history. I don't get why people over-inflate this idea.