Using Helm to manage operators, CRDs, and CRs

In this chapter, we installed the Guestbook operator and CRD by using the Makefile instance generated by operator-sdk. Then, we installed a Guestbook CR using kubectl apply. While this is an acceptable way of creating these resources, we could also install the operator, CRD, and CR by using Helm charts to provide a more repeatable solution for installing and managing an operator.

Helm allows you to create CRDs by adding them to a directory called crds/ in your Helm chart. Helm creates CRDs before any of the other resources defined under the templates/ folder, making it simpler to install applications such as operators that depend on CRDs.

The following file structure depicts a Helm chart that could be used to install the Guestbook operator:

guestbook-operator/
  Chart.yaml
  crds/
    guestbooks_crd.yaml
  templates/
    deployment.yaml
    ...