helm template --namespace should set the 'metadata.namespace' field on created resources

[munnerz]

I'm currently using helm template to generate static manifests from our authoritative helm chart in the cert-manager project. You can see the script that does this here: https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager/blob/master/hack/update-deploy-gen.sh.

Currently, despite specifying --namespace, the namespace field is not set on the generated resources. I'm aware that I could deploy with -n namespace, however for a cleaner experience for end-users, it'd be preferable to not have to include this step.

In the meantime, I will likely add namespace: {{ .Release.Namespace }} to each of my namespaced resources, however it'd be ideal if helm template itself could do this (as from what I understand, the best practice with helm chart is to not include the metadata.namespace field at all, and let helm/tiller manage namespace selection).

Is this the recommended approach, and would it be conceivable to change the behaviour of helm template to do this for us automatically?

[fejta-bot]

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[bbetter173]

Please don't close this issue - it impacts us quite heavily as having to fork charts just to add the namespace metadata is arduous.

[deltaroe]

It's a hack, but you can pass the output of helm template through this to add the namespace. https://gist.github.com/deltaroe/63afd52ba84274ed5b86ba9b0c357e8f

helm template -f values.yaml -n NAME CHART | ./add-ns.py cool-namespace | kubectl apply -f-

[daviddyball]

Would it be safe to assume that this issue won't be looked into until Helm 3 is released?

[Tronix117]

Using the hack of @deltaroe don't forget to pass --namespace cool-namespace to the helm template too. Some charts providers have started adding the namespace key themselves due to this issue.

[deefdragon]

I WAS setting up a process to store rendered templates versioned such that I can validate any changes to the values as well as any changes to the helm in one location. The fact that namespaces are not saved in the templates took me several hours to debug and working with helm was a waste of my time.

This was closed for a ridiculous reason. The yaml files output from helm template should represent the EXACT state that helm install would create. Not "the state that would be applied if kubectl uses the same arguments". Otherwise whats the point of having those options on template to begin with? Or the point of templating at all? They are literally irrelevant for my use case now, and I have to redesign my process.

Either add them to the template, or remove them as arguments (crash if set). I'm for the former because that option makes actual sense as to what templates are supposed to do, but at least pick one.

[MichaelHindley]

We are running into major headaches with helm template not working as expected with diverse namespace parameters. In our case, we have a GitOps pattern and we render out helm templates in order to perform reconciliation, the issue is that the metadata.namespace field is not respecting the namespace parameter as I think we and many others would find intuitive, mostly because it differs from helm install but it does so on locally provided input, not on cluster data.

[mlkmhd]

I did it with yq and kubectl-slice tools:

#!/bin/bash

helm template -n $KUBERNETES_NAMESPACE myproject ./helm-chart > all.yaml

kubectl-slice --input-file=all.yaml --output-dir=manifests

for filename in manifests/*; do
    yq -i --yaml-output ".metadata |= ({namespace: \"$KUBERNETES_NAMESPACE\"} + .)" $filename
done

[bernardgut]

why is this closed ? The documentation makes it seem like helm template and helm install are functionally equivalent while clearly, they are not.

This is clearly not a "feature" : Countless downstream projects and users are wasting time because of this, as you can obviously see with the trail of links pointing to this issue above.