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Package and push your chart to Harbor#

By the end of this guide, your Helm chart will be packaged and available in Harbor's Helm registry, ready to be referenced from your apps GitOps repository.

The chart lives in a deploy/ folder at the root of your application repository. It uses the Stakater Application Chart as a dependency to define all Kubernetes resources (Deployment, Service, Route, etc.) through a single values.yaml.

Replace the following placeholders with your own values throughout this guide:

Placeholder Description
APP_NAME Your application name
CHART_VERSION The chart version to publish (e.g. 1.0.0)
HARBOR_HELM_REPO_URL The Helm registry URL from Harbor (find it via Forecastle)
HARBOR_USERNAME Your Harbor username
HARBOR_PASSWORD Your Harbor password

1. Set up the chart structure#

If your deploy/ folder does not exist yet, create it with the following two files.

deploy/Chart.yaml:

apiVersion: v2
name: APP_NAME
description: A Helm chart for Kubernetes
dependencies:
  - name: application
    version: 2.1.13
    repository: https://stakater.github.io/stakater-charts
type: application
version: CHART_VERSION

deploy/values.yaml — minimal example with a Deployment and Route:

application:
  applicationName: APP_NAME
  deployment:
    imagePullSecrets: nexus-docker-config-forked
    image:
      repository: APP_NAME
      tag: CHART_VERSION
  route:
    enabled: true
    port:
      targetPort: http

All available configuration options are documented in the Application Chart values reference.

2. Download chart dependencies#

cd deploy/
helm dependency build

3. Find your Harbor Helm registry URL#

Open Forecastle from your cluster and locate the Harbor tile. Derive the Helm registry URL:

  • Add -helm after the harbor portion of the hostname
  • Append /repository/helm-charts/

For example: https://harbor-helm-stakater-harbor.apps.clustername.example.com/repository/helm-charts/

4. Package the chart#

helm package .

This creates APP_NAME-CHART_VERSION.tgz in the current directory.

5. Push the chart to Harbor#

curl -u "HARBOR_USERNAME":"HARBOR_PASSWORD" HARBOR_HELM_REPO_URL \
  --upload-file "APP_NAME-CHART_VERSION.tgz"

6. Verify#

Open the Harbor UI from Forecastle. Select Browse, then click Helm Charts to confirm your chart is listed with the expected version.

Harbor Helm chart list

With your chart in Harbor, continue to Deploy a new version via GitOps to release it to your cluster.