Helm release to be in custom namespace and not in default

Question

Is there a way I can specify the helm release to be deployed on a custom namespace. All the helm resources are deployed on a custom namespace that I created by mentioning

namespace: {{ template "plugin.namespace" . }}

and this is taken from _helper.tpl

But the release by itself is in default namespace

helm ls
NAME                        NAMESPACE   REVISION    UPDATED                                 STATUS      CHART                           APP VERSION
object-storage-plugin   default     3           2021-08-04 15:42:30.833512 +0530 IST    deployed    object-storage-plugin-2.1.2 2.1.2

I know via command line we can set the namespace but I am looking for options from a template file where the namespace would be picked

I referred https://helm.sh/docs/chart_template_guide/getting_started/

With helm3 --create-namespace creates new namespace but helm uninstall command doesnt delete this newly created NS.

David Maze David Maze · Accepted Answer · 2021-08-06T11:43:30

In normal use you must use the helm install --namespace option to specify the namespace where Helm keeps its persistent data. There's no way to specify this in a file.

Also in normal use, you wouldn't manually specify the namespace: in individual YAML files. Resources will automatically be installed in the helm install --namespace (in the same way as if you kubectl apply --namespace ... -f ...). You should only need namespace: for unusual setups where the same chart needs to install things in multiple namespaces; IME that's usually only if you're using Helm for doing cluster-level setup.

However, you also tagged this question as helmfile. If you're using Helmfile, then in the helmfile.yaml file, you can specify the namespace to use there. The helmfile.yaml effectively has helm install options listed out in YAML, so you again wouldn't need to specify namespace: in templates.

# helmfile.yaml
# (not a plain Helm artifact)
releases:
  - name: object-storage-plugin
    namespace: object-storage-plugin       # <-- configure this
    chart: ./charts/object-storage-plugin
    values:
      - values.dev.yaml
  # `helmfile apply` will do the equivalent to
  #
  # helm install object-storage-plugin \
  #   ./charts/object-storage-plugin \
  #   -n object-storage-plugin \
  #   -f values.dev.yaml

Helm release to be in custom namespace and not in default

1 Answers