Helm Chart for Cluster API GitOps Installation / Operation

[tuunit]

What would you like to be added (User Story)?

As an operator of cluster API, I want to be able to install and manage Cluster API using a GitOps approach for easier deployment and management of large Kubernetes cluster environments.

Detailed Description

A Helm chart for Cluster API would provide a standardized and convenient way to deploy and manage Cluster API components. This would be particularly beneficial for GitOps workflows, where infrastructure is defined and managed declaratively as code.

Basic idea:

• A generic Helm chart for the Cluster-API CRDs
• Installation and upgrade of the cluster operator and webhook controller
• On top of that, cluster-api providers could provide their own helm charts with the specific controller implementations and CRDs
• This would allow for integration with popular GitOps tools like ArgoCD
• Pre-configured values for common Cluster API configurations?

Anything else you would like to add?

As mentioned in issue #2811, there has been previous interest in this feature. I would be happy to contribute a PR for the Helm chart if it is deemed desirable.

Label(s) to be applied

/kind feature
One or more /area label. See https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api/labels?q=area for the list of labels.

[k8s-ci-robot]

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[chrischdi]

I think this is was https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api-operator tries to accomplish.

[fabriziopandini]

this is an old and recurring discussion.
It is not that we don't think helm chart could be useful, but we don't want to host helm chart if we are not sure we can guarantee their quality over time.

This requires a group of persons committed to implement all the E2E tests to validate those charts, ensure they remain operational, and they work when upgrades.

Also if we have such a team, we should probably discuss if this overlaps with the goals of the cluster-api-operator project, and if this repo is the right place to do this or having a separated repo might be a better solution e.g. because it decouples the release cycles, it allows to group helm chart for CAPI and CAPI providers etc (and many other projects are following the same approach).