Should I Promote values.yaml from Dev to Production in GitOps with Helm and Argo CD?

In our workflow, we have a common values.yaml for shared settings, and then separate environment-specific values files. This allows us to promote essential shared configurations across environments while keeping sensitive or unique settings isolated. It's all about finding the right balance that suits your deployment pipeline!

I lean towards using Kustomize for managing different environments, as it can help with layering custom configurations without the complexity of merged values files. Using Kustomize with Argo CD can simplify the management of various configs and reduce deployment headaches caused by environment differences.

We’ve adopted a setup with separate values files for each environment, like values-dev.yaml for development and values-prod.yaml for production. When promoting from dev to prod, we just copy the dev values file over, keeping critical environment-specific settings in the prod file. This gives us a clear distinction while still allowing us some flexibility in managing the common configurations.

I think it really depends on the specific values you're dealing with. Some, like hostnames and resources, should definitely remain environment-specific. If some values can actually align between dev and prod, consider integrating them into the chart directly and just promoting the chart itself instead. That way, you keep your environments clean and avoid potential conflicts later on.

It's generally accepted that some values in your values.yaml might change with app versions, like certain config parameters. Those could be promoted alongside the app. However, many values, especially resource definitions like limits and requests, should be environment-specific. So, promoting values.yaml directly might not be the best idea since production and dev environments often require different configurations. Coupling them can lead to issues when the application changes. I'd suggest keeping them separate unless you're very sure a specific change applies to both environments.