This recipe showed you how to install the Helm package manager and build your first Helm chart.

When we built the Helm chart in the Building a Helm chart recipe, in step 1, the helm create command created a couple of files as a template under the chart folder. You can start by editing these files or create them from scratch when you become more comfortable with the structure.

The helm create command creates the templates that construct our Helm chart. The contents and their functionality are explained here:

mychart 
├── Chart.yaml          --> Description of the chart
├── charts              --> Directory for chart dependencies
├── mychart-0.1.0.tgz   --> Packaged chart following the SemVer 2 standard
├── templates           --> Directory for chart templates
│   ├── NOTES.txt       --> Help text displayed to users
│   ├── _helpers.tpl    --> Helpers that you can re-use 
│   ├── deployment.yaml --> Application - example deployment
│   ├── service.yaml    --> Application - example service endpoint
└── values.yaml         --> Default values for a chart

In the Building a Helm chart recipe, in step 3, helm install, when used along with the --dry-run parameter, sends the chart to the server and returns the rendered template only instead of installing it. This is usually used for testing Helm charts.

In the same recipe, in step 4, the helm package command packages your complete chart into a chart archive, basically a tarball.

In step 5, we used the curl command to send the packaged tarball binary to our ChartMuseum server, an HTTP server, so it can serve our Helm chart archives when it receives GET requests from the helm command.

Now you have learned how to install Helm charts and create your Helm charts in your local repositories, you will be able to install the third-party charts required in the next chapters, as well as building your own artifacts in your CI/CD pipelines.