What’s the Best Way to Test Changes in a Helm Chart?

We run unit tests and deploy directly on a cluster as part of our CI pipeline. This helps catch issues early and ensures everything works as intended.

While developing, I usually run the template command to verify that the correct YAML gets generated. You can also pipe the output to a file for easier visualization. Plus, using tools like yq can help you inspect specific parts of the output. And don’t forget, a dry run against the cluster can serve as a syntax check too.

We use snapshot tests as part of our workflow, running them continually as we make changes. This really speeds up the feedback process and helps catch any issues quickly.

For us, we rely on unit tests through the Terratest Helm package. It helps ensure everything is rendering as expected. We also conduct integration tests with chart-testing, which checks the actual installation and includes linting. You can find a lot of useful info and links in those repositories!

A solid option is to deploy your chart in a development or testing environment. This way, you can see how it performs in a real scenario. Another approach is using the --dry-run option to validate your changes without actually deploying them.