GitOps the Hard Way, with Argo CD

Helm vs. Plain Kubernetes Resources

Helm is the package manager for Kubernetes, the same way apt is for Debian-based systems and yum or dnf is for Red Hat-based systems. But it is more than a package manager. Helm simplifies the deployment and configuration management of Kubernetes applications. It lets you define, install, and upgrade applications using templates you can reuse across environments.

Helm lets you parameterize Kubernetes manifests instead of hardcoding values into them. That is the difference that matters here: a plain manifest is fixed, a Helm chart is a template plus a set of values.

In our previous examples, when we deployed our todo app, we created Kubernetes resources as plain YAML files and an Argo CD Application to manage their lifecycle.

apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
kind: Application
metadata:
  name: todo-app
  namespace: argocd
spec:
  destination:
    namespace: default
    server: https://kubernetes.default.svc
  project: default
  source:
    path: manifests
    repoURL: $GITLAB_URL
    targetRevision: main
  syncPolicy:
    automated:
      prune: true
      selfHeal: true
      allowEmpty: false
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