# Kubernetes Helm
[](https://circleci.com/gh/kubernetes/helm)
Helm is a tool for managing Kubernetes charts. Charts are packages of
pre-configured Kubernetes resources.
Use Helm to...
- Find and use popular software packaged as Kubernetes charts
- Share your own applications as Kubernetes charts
- Create reproducible builds of your Kubernetes applications
- Intelligently manage your Kubernetes manifest files
- Manage releases of Helm packages
## Helm in a Handbasket
Helm is a tool that streamlines installing and managing Kubernetes applications.
Think of it like apt/yum/homebrew for Kubernetes.
- Helm has two parts: a client (`helm`) and a server (`tiller`)
- Tiller runs inside of your Kubernetes cluster, and manages releases (installations)
of your charts.
- Helm runs on your laptop, CI/CD, or wherever you want it to run.
- Charts are Helm packages that contain at least two things:
- A description of the package (`Chart.yaml`)
- One or more templates, which contain Kubernetes manifest files
- Charts can be stored on disk, or fetched from remote chart repositories
(like Debian or RedHat packages)
Using Helm is as easy as this:
```console
$ helm init # Initialize Helm as well as the Tiller server
$ helm install docs/examples/alpine # Install the example Alpine chart
happy-panda # <-- That's the name of your release
$ helm list # List all releases
happy-panda
quiet-kitten
```
## Install
Helm is in its early stages of development. At this time there are no binary
releases.
To install Helm from source, follow this process:
Make sure you have the prerequisites:
- Go 1.6
- A running Kubernetes cluster
- `kubectl` properly configured to talk to your cluster
- [Glide](https://glide.sh/) 0.10 or greater with both git and mercurial installed.
1. [Properly set your $GOPATH](https://golang.org/doc/code.html)
2. Clone (or otherwise download) this repository into $GOPATH/src/k8s.io/helm
3. Run `make bootstrap build`
You will now have two binaries built:
- `bin/helm` is the client
- `bin/tiller` is the server
From here, you can run `bin/helm` and use it to install a recent snapshot of
Tiller. Helm will use your `kubectl` config to learn about your cluster.
For development on Tiller, you can locally run Tiller, or you build a Docker
image (`make docker-build`) and then deploy it (`helm init -i IMAGE_NAME`).
The [documentation](docs) folder contains more information about the
architecture and usage of Helm/Tiller.
## The History of the Project
Kubernetes Helm is the merged result of [Helm
Classic](https://github.com/helm/helm) and the Kubernetes port of GCS Deployment
Manager. The project was jointly started by Google and Deis, though it
is now part of the CNCF.
Differences from Helm Classic:
- Helm now has both a client (`helm`) and a server (`tiller`). The
server runs inside of Kubernetes, and manages your resources.
- Helm's chart format has changed for the better:
- Dependencies are immutable and stored inside of a chart's `charts/`
directory.
- Charts are strongly versioned using [SemVer 2](http://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html)
- Charts can be loaded from directories or from chart archive files
- Helm supports Go templates without requiring you to run `generate`
or `template` commands.
- Helm makes it easy to configure your releases -- and share the
configuration with the rest of your team.
- Helm chart repositories now use plain HTTP instead of Git/GitHub.
There is no longer any GitHub dependency.
- A chart server is a simple HTTP server
- Charts are referenced by version
- The `helm serve` command will run a local chart server, though you
can easily use object storage (S3, GCS) or a regular web server.
- And you can still load charts from a local directory.
- The Helm workspace is gone. You can now work anywhere on your
filesystem that you want to work.