Why do I have to nest my charts inside of the charts/ subdirectory?

[jon-whit]

Lets say I have a Git repository structured like this:

github.com/myorg/helm-charts
    chart1/
        templates/
        Chart.yaml
    chart2/
        templates/
        Chart.yaml
    README.md

If I pass the chart_dir in my GitHub Workflow file as the current checked out working directory (e.g. .), it doesn't work. If I re-organize my repository structure so that it maps to:

github.com/myorg/helm-charts
    charts/
        chart1/
            templates/
            Chart.yaml
        chart2/
            templates/
            Chart.yaml
    README.md

it works just fine.

Having a top-level repository helm-charts and requiring a nested charts directory stutters and is completely unnecessary. Why was this design decision chosen and would you be willing to change it?

[torstenwalter]

Looks like the option is called charts_dir https://github.com/helm/chart-releaser-action/blob/c25b74a/action.yml#L25. So you've been missing the s at the end.

      - name: Run chart-releaser
        uses: helm/chart-releaser-action@v1.2.1
        env:
          CR_TOKEN: "${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}"
        with:
          charts_dir: '.'

@jon-whit So I think this can be closed.

[ayoubfaouzi]

That does not work to me either.

My chart files are in the root for my github project, using charts_dir: '.'

Run helm/chart-releaser-action@v1.2.1
Run owner=$(cut -d '/' -f 1 <<< "$GITHUB_REPOSITORY")
Looking up latest tag...
Discovering changed charts since '86d0b43dd19c8663bae29b68c03790c0a64a524c'...
WARNING: .github/workflows/Chart.yaml is missing, assuming that '.github/workflows' is not a Helm chart. Skipping.
Nothing to do. No chart changes detected.

using ../.. did not work either.

Cheers.

[torstenwalter]

Was you chart changed since commit 86d0b43dd19c8663bae29b68c03790c0a64a524c?

If you want to debug it I suggest to have a look at:
https://github.com/helm/chart-releaser-action/blob/main/cr.sh#L57-L59
https://github.com/helm/chart-releaser-action/blob/main/cr.sh#L222-L232

[ayoubfaouzi]

Hi @torstenwalter

Yes my chart has changed since that commit, you can have a look here: https://github.com/saferwall/charts.

It seems like it always require the Chart.yaml to be located in a directory inside the charts_dir.

Thanks.

[torstenwalter]

https://github.com/saferwall/charts/blob/main/Chart.yaml#L2

Your chart is named saferwall so I think it expects it to be in a directory with that name. I thought you meant an additional directory named charts containing it.

[MurzNN]

@torstenwalter If we have a single chart and want to create a Helm repo with this single chart, why do we need to create an additional subdirectory for it? Let's store it in root, without complicating the directory structure!

Managing each chart in separate Git repository is much more convenient than one large monorepo with a plain mix of commits and issues from different charts.

[torstenwalter]

@MurzNN fyi I am just a user of chart releaser, not a maintainer

[maximemoreillon]

I would also prefer to have one repo per chart (as opposed to to all my charts in a a single repo) so the structure required by chart-releaser-action is not ideal for me.

Is it really more common to have all of one's charts in a monorepo?