[Helm2] helm install and template produce different output

[yfei1]

It seems like helm template my-chart install the helm tests but helm install my-chart excludes them. Is it the expected behavior? If so, should we document this behavior somewhere in the website?

Output of helm version:

Client: &version.Version{SemVer:"v2.14.0", GitCommit:"05811b84a3f93603dd6c2fcfe57944dfa7ab7fd0", GitTreeState:"clean"}
Server: &version.Version{SemVer:"v2.14.1", GitCommit:"5270352a09c7e8b6e8c9593002a73535276507c0", GitTreeState:"clean"}

Output of kubectl version:

Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"14", GitVersion:"v1.14.1", GitCommit:"b7394102d6ef778017f2ca4046abbaa23b88c290", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2019-04-08T17:11:31Z", GoVersion:"go1.12.1", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
Server Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"13+", GitVersion:"v1.13.9-gke.3", GitCommit:"cf98c87ae263ea1b75e03d11251acdb958286c9d", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2019-08-12T23:00:17Z", GoVersion:"go1.11.5b4", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}

Cloud Provider/Platform (AKS, GKE, Minikube etc.):
GKE

[jlegrone]

Helm tests are hooks, which are only applied to the cluster during specific phases of helm install/upgrade/delete/test subcommands.

The difference in output between helm template and helm install is expected behavior. Template is often used for debugging purposes and by default renders all chart resources, including hooks. There is a --no-hooks flag to skip rendering hooks which should give you the same output as helm install, however.

Here are the docs for template:

https://helm.sh/docs/helm/#helm-template

[yfei1]

@jlegrone helm template does not inherit the --no-hooks flag though. I use helm template to generate the static yaml resources with different customization options so that customers are able to kubectl apply -f app.yaml with one line. If template is solely used for debugging purposes, what would you recommend using helm for such a use case?

[bacongobbler]

You are correct. In Helm 3, helm install and helm template share the same code base so helm template --no-hooks is present and works as expected. This flag is not present in Helm 2's helm template command, however.

[yfei1]

Ah, thanks for the update. Can’t wait to use helm3!