Helm charts are managing namespace

[imunhatep]

Helm charts are managing namespace

[jeantil]

I started an attempt at implementing helm's 3 best practices regarding namespace management as laid out by one helm's core maintainer in this comment

However after trying to apply the namespace-less recommendation I encoutered at 2 issues which made me doubt that the official best practice was sound

I am considering using defaulting instead of fully removing the namespace mentions

{{ .Values.namespace | default .Release.Namespace }}

This would make the default behaviour align with the recommendations while allowing users to pin the namespace through value
I wonder if people in the team have an opinion ...

[imunhatep]

This issue is not about usage of namespace refs in rbac manifests or other kinds.. This issue is about managing kind: namespace , i.e. create, update, delete e.t.c with HELM chart.

I reported same issue for other pulsar chart: streamnative/charts#140

[jeantil]

I am confused, in your initial issue you provided the following reproduction steps:

kubectl create ns pulsartest
helm upgrade --install pulsar -n pulsartest apache/pulsar
Error: namespaces "pulsar" not found

the chart does not try to create/update/delete the namespace and the chart will succeed if you configure it correclty (pass --set namespace=pulsartest) still without creating/updating/deleting a namespace.So you are forced to repeat the namespace information which is suboptimal.

The helm's best practice indicate that to avoid this repetition chart maintainers are not supposed to embbed namespace definitions in their templates.
The problem is that making the chart follow the official helm conventions ( which is easy) will fail in some common helm/k8s workflows because of the rbac/FQDN issues i mention in the referenced comment.

In the stream native chart they had already applied the other alternative I mentioned :

I am considering using defaulting instead of fully removing the namespace mentions
{{ .Values.namespace | default .Release.Namespace }}

They had left a default value in the values file which required you to pass --set namespace=null to get the desired behavior. The fix they applied to your issue was to remove the default value and align the documentation.

I'm hoping one of the maintainers for the apache chart will comment on what they would consider the correct option for their chart :D

[imunhatep]

Hey, thank you for follow up.

Here I see chart is managing NS and in fact will try to create/delete it: https://github.com/apache/pulsar-helm-chart/blob/master/charts/pulsar/templates/namespace.yaml

While it seems convenient to be able to create namespace by configuring the chart, but the whole goal of mentioned helm issues, is to point out missing tooling in helm to properly manage NS.

At the end, it's up to maintainers to decide how to handle charts.. e.g. streamnative decided that updating docs is the way, well.. ok :)