Universal Helm Chart

🌐 Website: https://helm.networkcat89.com

📖 Documentation: https://helm.networkcat89.com/docs

🎮 Playground: https://helm.networkcat89.com/playground

⭐ Examples: https://helm.networkcat89.com/examples

A reusable, production-ready universal Helm chart for deploying applications to Kubernetes.

Universal Helm Chart is a generic Helm chart and reusable application Helm chart for Kubernetes. Deploy different containerized applications with one configurable chart instead of maintaining a separate chart for every service.

It supports Deployments with configurable rollout strategies, Services, Ingress, Gateway API HTTPRoutes, Prometheus Operator ServiceMonitors, Jobs, CronJobs, autoscaling, ConfigMaps, Secrets, persistent volumes, init containers, sidecars, custom Kubernetes manifests, and more.

Quick Start

helm repo add universal https://chaser100.github.io/u-helm-chart
helm repo update

helm upgrade --install my-app universal/application \
  --namespace my-app \
  --create-namespace \
  --set image=nginx \
  --set imageTag=1.27

Why Use This Chart?

Instead of maintaining one Helm chart per application, maintain one reusable chart and configure deployments entirely through values.yaml.

• Use one Helm chart across multiple applications
• Reduce duplicated Kubernetes templates between services
• Keep application-specific configuration in values.yaml
• Support both simple workloads and advanced Kubernetes configurations
• Integrate with Helm, Argo CD, Flux, and other GitOps workflows
• Deploy applications without creating a new application chart each time

See Why This Chart? for design goals, trade-offs, and cases where a dedicated chart is a better fit.

Tested Examples

The tests/ directory contains tested, ready-to-use values.yaml examples and is the source of truth for supported configurations. Every example is linted and rendered in CI.

• Basic application
• Deployment strategy
• Ingress and plain Ingress
• Gateway API HTTPRoute and advanced HTTPRoute
• Prometheus Operator ServiceMonitor
• Jobs and CronJobs
• Storage and full configuration
• Sidecars

See all tested configurations in helm-charts/application/tests/.

Documentation

• Why this chart?
• Configuration reference
• Deployment strategy
• Ingress
• Gateway API
• Jobs
• CronJobs
• Persistent storage
• Sidecars
• Init containers
• Extra deployments

Features

• Flexible deployments - Configure replicas, rollout strategies, commands, probes, resources, lifecycle hooks, and scheduling
• Ingress and Gateway API - Support standard Ingress, extra Ingress, plain Ingress, and simple or fully configurable Gateway API HTTPRoutes
• Prometheus monitoring - Optionally create a Prometheus Operator ServiceMonitor for the chart-managed Service
• Jobs and CronJobs - Run one-time and scheduled workloads with dedicated configuration
• Autoscaling - Scale Deployments with autoscaling/v2 HorizontalPodAutoscaler resources
• Security configuration - Configure security contexts, service accounts, and Pod Security Standards-compatible settings
• Storage - Mount ConfigMaps, Secrets, arbitrary volumes, and PersistentVolumeClaims
• Init and sidecar containers - Run supporting containers alongside the main application
• Custom resources - Add raw Kubernetes manifests and extra Deployments when needed
• GitOps workflows - Use the same chart with Helm, Argo CD, Flux, and other deployment tools

Requirements

• Helm 3
• Kubernetes 1.23+ for the complete built-in API set used by the chart, including autoscaling/v2
• Gateway API CRDs and a compatible Gateway controller when route.enabled=true
• Prometheus Operator ServiceMonitor CRD when serviceMonitor.enabled=true

Gateway API and Prometheus Operator CRDs are not installed by this chart. Install and manage the required CRDs separately before enabling HTTPRoute or ServiceMonitor resources.

Installation

This chart is published through GitHub Pages as a Helm repository.

Add the Helm Repository

helm repo add universal https://chaser100.github.io/u-helm-chart
helm repo update

Create Application Values

# values.yaml
image: ghcr.io/example/my-app
imageTag: "1.0.0"

service:
  port: 8080

ingress:
  enabled: true
  className: nginx
  hosts:
    - host: app.example.com
      paths:
        - path: /
          pathType: Prefix

Install or Upgrade

Use the same idempotent command for the initial installation and later upgrades:

helm upgrade --install my-app universal/application \
  --namespace my-app \
  --create-namespace \
  -f values.yaml

To pin a chart version in CI/CD, list available versions and pass the selected version explicitly:

helm search repo universal/application --versions

helm upgrade --install my-app universal/application \
  --version <VERSION> \
  --namespace my-app \
  --create-namespace \
  -f values.yaml

Uninstall

helm uninstall my-app --namespace my-app

Configuration

The complete parameter reference and examples live in Configuration. Prefer the tested files in helm-charts/application/tests/ when starting a new deployment.

Troubleshooting

The commands below assume the release name and namespace are both my-app.

Check Workload Status

kubectl get pods \
  --namespace my-app \
  --selector app.kubernetes.io/instance=my-app

Describe Pods and Events

kubectl describe pods \
  --namespace my-app \
  --selector app.kubernetes.io/instance=my-app

View Logs

kubectl logs \
  --namespace my-app \
  --selector app.kubernetes.io/instance=my-app \
  --all-containers=true

Check Services and Routes

kubectl get services,endpoints,ingresses,httproutes \
  --namespace my-app \
  --selector app.kubernetes.io/instance=my-app

Test Ingress

kubectl get ingress --namespace my-app
curl -H "Host: app.example.com" http://<INGRESS_IP>/

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please open an issue or submit a pull request with a tested values.yaml example for user-visible chart behavior.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for release history.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.