Random Helm Output messages

[afmsavage]

In the VSCode output window, there are sometimes very vague errors from the Helm extension that pop up every time you open up a helm based project. There is no detail around these messages, and I cannot figure out how to turn them off or where the error is coming from. There is no information in helm lint nor in the Problems tab. Please provide more information about why these are occuring. Example:

Unexpected characters ().

[bacongobbler]

I could only find two locations where that error message can be found:

https://github.com/Azure/vscode-kubernetes-tools/blob/e134027df60019718c2a45e9b3df59d660a08fdb/src/helm.documentProvider.ts#L83-L90

https://github.com/Azure/vscode-kubernetes-tools/blob/929a87c101bbe46d5233f88c37c4868079b88846/src/helm.exec.ts#L417-L424

Try looking at your chart name in Chart.yaml.

Can you report back which version of the extension you are using? Thanks.

[afmsavage]

Chart.yaml is generic, no issues in it that I can see or any ( ) characters.

apiVersion: v1
appVersion: "1.0"
name: mina
description: A Helm chart to deploy a 
version: 0.2.0
keywords:
  - m
maintainers:
- name: b
  email: hi@b.co
  url: https://b.co

Kubernetes Extension: v1.3.0

[bacongobbler]

Hmm... Thanks for the report. I don't know where this error message might be reported from but perhaps other maintainers may know more.

https://github.com/Azure/vscode-kubernetes-tools/search?q=unexpected

[itowlson]

That message is coming via the Helm output logger (defined in src/logger.ts. I can't see anywhere it outputs that message format in the extension, which means it's coming either from Helm itself, via stdout or stderr, or from some other external source such as the YAML extension. The fact that you see it on load (without running any explicit commands) makes me wonder if it's coming from the completion provider or something... We may need to improve tracing to track it down...

[thernstig]

I have seen this issue for a long time, but never reported it. It happens every time I open a repo with Helm where I have the values.yaml file open. The output is the same as in the original post: Unexpected characters (). (seen in the Output for Helm). The annoying part is that this error actually opens the Output panel automatically, so I have to manually close it every time.

[afmsavage]

I think I know why this is occurring in at least my project. The only place that I have ( )'s in my chart is in the serviceMonitor.spec.endpoints.sourceLabels.regex field where we are using this to ignore certain Prometheus metrics to save cycles. Not sure if this helps to track this issue down or not.

  endpoints:
    - port: {{ .Values.metrics.name }}
      interval: 10s
      metricRelabelings:
      - sourceLabels: [__name__]
        regex: '(Coda_Cryptography.*|Coda_Network_get.*|Coda_Object_lifetime.*|Coda_Scan.*|Coda_Snark.*)'
        action: drop

EDIT: Actually I completely missed that I have other parentheses in my statefulSet under a container's args field as well.

        args: [
          "daemon",
          "--peer-list-file", "$(PEERLIST_LOCATION)",
          "--block-producer-key", "/keystore/my-wallet",
          "--generate-genesis-proof", "true",
          "--file-log-level", "$(LOG_LEVEL)",
          "--metrics-port", {{ .Values.metrics.port | quote }},
          "--coinbase-receiver", "$(REWARDS_ADDRESS)"
          ]

[itowlson]

@bacongobbler Would Helm emit this message under these circumstances?

[bacongobbler]

It's not an error message I'm familiar with. Usually Helm/Go errors also include some indication what file/line this error was emitted from, so I don't think it's Helm emitting the error.

https://github.com/helm/helm/search?q=Unexpected+characters&type=

[thernstig]

@afmsavage I've found out that this was due to some incorrectly formatted YAML. For some reason the YAML parser showed squiggly lines and it was marked red in the scrollbar in VS Code.

But it was Helm that gave the error we see in this thread in the Output panel.

@bacongobbler is there any strange behavior here with the Helm in the Output panel showing errors due to YAML parsing, that can be avoided so it doesn't look like this extension is responsible?

[Yann-J]

Hey just to chime in that I've been facing a similar issue... in my case this was caused by some empty lines in the middle of commented text:

values.yaml snippet:

configOverrides:
  {}
  # extend_timeout: |
  #    # Extend timeout to allow long running queries.

  #    SUPERSET_WEBSERVER_TIMEOUT = ...
  # enable_oauth: |
...

Was causing this error:

Unexpected characters near "
# extend_timeout: |

# enable_oauth: |
# secret: |".

Removing the empty line has removed the warning...