How to set suitable time intervals for different controllers?

[frank-bee]

I'm asking myself how to set the interval values.
Are the controllers running completely asynchronously?
E.g. for HelmRelease: It references a GitSource ad as well Kustomize resource is involved .
How to the 3 time intervals play together?
Shouldn't it be enough to set a interval for the GitSource and with any change the other controllers (kustomize and helm) are triggered implicitely?

My intention is to not overload the Git source access because I still face problems sometimes when accessing Azure devops repos ( flaky behaviour, error log entries several times a day)

[hiddeco]

They run completely asynchronously but may watch for changes to objects reconciled by another controller.

Concrete examples:

GitRepository with an interval of 10m will check the upstream Git repository every 10 minutes for changes.

HelmChart with an interval of 15m will check the artifact of the GitRepository every 15 minutes, but as it also watches the GitRepository for changes, it will get reconciled when a new GitRepository artifact revision becomes available.

HelmRelease with an interval of 30m will check the artifact of the HelmChart every 30 minutes (and reconcile Helm state), but if a new HelmChart revision is made available, it will get reconciled right away.

[frank-bee]

Thanks for the explanations @hiddeco !

So if I have a HelmRelease pointing to a HelmChart via GitRepository source ref, then only the interval of the GitRepository is of relevance, correct?

E.g.

chart:
    spec:
      chart: chart
      sourceRef:
        kind: GitRepository
        name: foo

[frank-bee]

If so , I would omit the interval value for the HelmRelease , better not explicitly defining it in this case to avoid confusion

[hiddeco]

No, it is not as the controller does a lot more than just checking if there is a new chart available. It for example also confirms the Helm storage has not been changed, and the release still exists.

If you would omit the interval (which is not actually possible, as this is a required field), all those things would no longer be checked and acted upon.

[frank-bee]

Got it , thanks @hiddeco for the insides!