helmfile lint+template command try to fetch local chart in 0.119.1

[Morriz]

I use hooks to create tmp charts, but when I try to install those like this, it tries to fetch them and fails:

releases:
  ...
  chart: /tmp/charts/base
  ...

Error:

Fetching /tmp/charts/base
in helmfile.tpl/helmfile-init.yaml: [command "/home/app/tools/helm" exited with non-zero status:

PATH:
  /home/app/tools/helm

ARGS:
  0: helm (4 bytes)
  1: fetch (5 bytes)
  2: /tmp/charts/base (16 bytes)
  3: --untar (7 bytes)
  4: --untardir (10 bytes)
  5: /tmp/859425149/base/latest/tmp/charts/base (42 bytes)

ERROR:
  exit status 1

EXIT STATUS
  1

STDERR:
  Error: repo  not found

COMBINED OUTPUT:
  Error: repo  not found]

This happens in version 0.119.1 but I had this working fine before in 0.114.0.

[Morriz]

@mumoshu @roboll Can you guys look at this? I just tried the latest 0.123.0 and this issue still exists:

in helmfile.tpl/helmfile-init.yaml: [command "/home/app/tools/helm" exited with non-zero status:

PATH:
  /home/app/tools/helm

ARGS:
  0: helm (4 bytes)
  1: fetch (5 bytes)
  2: /tmp/charts/base (16 bytes)
  3: --untar (7 bytes)
  4: --untardir (10 bytes)
  5: /tmp/882486847/base/latest/tmp/charts/base (42 bytes)


ERROR:
--
19 | exit status 1
20 |  
21 | EXIT STATUS
22 | 1
23 |  
24 | STDERR:
25 | Error: repo  not found
26 |  
27 | COMBINED OUTPUT:
28 | Error: repo  not found]
29 | error: no objects passed to apply

[Morriz]

Why does helmfile not see that this is a local chart? It starts with a forward slash.

Again, 0.114 is ok.

[mumoshu]

@Morriz Feeling interesting that I can't reproduce this. I have /tmp/charts/base that is accessible from my user and helmfile list helmfile lint just works. I'm on Helmfile v0.123.0.

Could you confirm that /tmp/charts/base is readable to your user?

[tinyzimmer]

@mumoshu I am having this issue also. I did not even have a /tmp/charts/base directory, but I made one and lint/template are still trying to fetch the local chart.

PATH:
  /usr/local/bin/helm

ARGS:
  0: helm (4 bytes)
  1: fetch (5 bytes)
  2: ./charts/my-chart (23 bytes)
  3: --untar (7 bytes)
  4: --untardir (10 bytes)
  5: /tmp/268970692/my-chart/charts/my-chart (58 bytes)

ERROR:
  exit status 1

EXIT STATUS
  1

STDERR:
  Error: repo . not found

COMBINED OUTPUT:
  Error: repo . not found]

I also don't see where /tmp/charts/base is even a thing. It appears to be just using standard ioutil.TempDir("", "").

$> helmfile --version
helmfile version v0.123.0

[mumoshu]

@tinyzimmer Thanks! Helmfile do use ioutil.TempDir("", ""), but only for creating a temporary directory which is used as the destination directory of helm fetch, not the input. So I was supposing it would have nothing to do with this issue.

Re: why this might be happening, Helmfile runs a lengthy logic to detect if it needs to be fetched. If the string specified in chart: is a valid local path, it skips fetching according to

helmfile/pkg/state/state.go

Lines 870 to 871 in 14636e3

	} else if pathExists(normalizeChart(st.basePath, release.Chart)) {
	chartPath = normalizeChart(st.basePath, release.Chart)

Maybe there're edge-cases that logic doesn't work as expected? Do you have any insight?

[tinyzimmer]

@mumoshu I'm not near the stuff I was working on at the moment, but I had eventually figured it out. And if I recall correctly, it was having the local paths quoted in the helmfile.yaml that was causing the behavior. But I'll double back if that wasn't the case.

[tinyzimmer]

I just did a quick poke through that package. Is this potentially the cause?

https://github.com/roboll/helmfile/blob/master/pkg/state/util.go#L10

func isLocalChart(chart string) bool {
	regex, _ := regexp.Compile("^[.]?./")
        // ...
}

This would go against my understanding of how yaml works 😛, but if the quotes are part of the string when that's getting evaluated then that regex wouldn't match.

EDIT: I actually can't for the life of me reproduce this right now. I was almost positive it had to do with the quotes in the end, but I can't validate that theory at the moment. For whatever it's worth, the chart in question had dependent charts that had not been built yet. I tried recreating that situation and then running a template, but then I got a completely rational error 😆

  Error: found in Chart.yaml, but missing in charts/ directory: base-chart

I'll update later if I have any success reproducing again.

[Morriz]

@Morriz Feeling interesting that I can't reproduce this. I have /tmp/charts/base that is accessible from my user and helmfile list just works. I'm on Helmfile v0.123.0.

Could you confirm that /tmp/charts/base is readable to your user?

I create these folders in a pre hook, so they don't exist beforehand. This worked up till the version I mentioned though. Something changed

[mumoshu]

@Morriz Thank you so much for the info! That does help. It turns out we accidentally changed the meaning of prepare hook that is intended to be called BEFORE the pathExists check there.

https://github.com/roboll/helmfile/pull/1172/files#diff-b4bc77a2ad92a32b058aaa223195ab06L800

I'll fix it asap. Thanks again for your patience and support.