Build umbrella chart with exact dependency helm chart version in requirements.yaml file

[rgaduput]

In umbrella chart requirements.yaml dependencies chart details are added with version, repository.
When we specify exact chart version in requirements.yaml, sometimes it fails to find that chart in Nexus helm repo, though it actually exists.
After some investigation found that, seems it looks for the version in index.yaml of that nexus repo, if required version is not same as like the one in index.yaml file it fails.
index.yaml contains latest version always, but what if we want to work with different version than latest one ? how can we fix this ?
Below is the snippet of requirements.yaml file

dependencies:
  - name: ms1
    version: "1.3.0"
    repository: http://user:passwd@nexus_host:8081/repository/helm_chart_repo/ms1
  - name: ms2
    version: "1.3.0"
    repository: http://user:passwd@nexus_host:8081/repository/helm_chart_repo/ms2
  - name: ms3
    version: "1.2.0"
    repository: http://user:passwd@nexus_host:8081/repository/helm_chart_repo/ms3
  - name: ms4
    version: "1.3.1"
    repository: http://user:passwd@nexus_host:8081/repository/helm_chart_repo/ms4

[jascott1]

Hi @rgaduput

A repo can contain more than one version of a chart as seen in the first entries in this example:
https://github.com/helm/helm/blob/master/docs/chart_repository.md#the-index-file

Is that what you are trying to accomplish or am I misunderstanding?

[rgaduput]

Hi @jascott1
correct, but somehow we always have latest chart details in index.yaml and not the older ones though we run helm repo index <chartdir> --url <remoteurl> --merge <remoteindexfile>.
is it because local chart directory has only the latest chart ? is there any other way to just update index.yaml with latest chart details and not overwrite it?
note we are using nexus to host remote chart repo.

[bacongobbler]

I think the issue has to do with using a remote file, as from the source code it looks like --merge only accepts a local file:

helm/cmd/helm/repo_index.go

Lines 89 to 102 in d3b69c1

	if mergeTo != "" {
	// if index.yaml is missing then create an empty one to merge into
	var i2 *repo.IndexFile
	if _, err := os.Stat(mergeTo); os.IsNotExist(err) {
	i2 = repo.NewIndexFile()
	i2.WriteFile(mergeTo, 0644)
	} else {
	i2, err = repo.LoadIndexFile(mergeTo)
	if err != nil {
	return fmt.Errorf("Merge failed: %s", err)
	}
	}
	i.Merge(i2)
	}

Can you try helm repo index <chartdir> --url <remoteurl> --merge ~/.helm/repository/cache/<reponame>-index.yaml after calling helm repo update?

[rgaduput]

Hi @bacongobbler ,
Found that issue is with our automation code :(.
Logic is something like this, download index.yaml from remote, merge it with local one and upload it back to remote.
but there was issues with downloading index.yaml from remote, which was causing always to just upload new file to remote.
After fixing the download code , it is working as expected (index.yaml has multiple versions now in remote)
Thank you.