Installing Helm

This guide shows how to install the Helm CLI. Helm can be installed either from source, or from pre-built binary releases.

From the Binary Releases

Every release of Helm provides binary releases for a variety of OSes. These binary versions can be manually downloaded and installed.

1. Download your desired version
2. Unpack it (tar -zxvf helm-v3.0.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz)
3. Find the helm binary in the unpacked directory, and move it to its desired destination (mv linux-amd64/helm /usr/local/bin/helm)

From there, you should be able to run the client and add the stable repo: helm help.

From Homebrew (macOS)

Members of the Kubernetes community have contributed a Helm formula build to Homebrew. This formula is generally up to date.

brew install helm

(Note: There is also a formula for emacs-helm, which is a different project.)

From Chocolatey (Windows)

Members of the Kubernetes community have contributed a Helm package build to Chocolatey. This package is generally up to date.

choco install kubernetes-helm

From Script

Helm now has an installer script that will automatically grab the latest version of Helm and install it locally.

You can fetch that script, and then execute it locally. It’s well documented so that you can read through it and understand what it is doing before you run it.

$ curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/master/scripts/get-helm-3
$ chmod 700 get_helm.sh
$ ./get_helm.sh

Yes, you can curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/master/scripts/get-helm-3 | bash that if you want to live on the edge.

From Canary Builds

“Canary” builds are versions of the Helm software that are built from the latest master branch. They are not official releases, and may not be stable. However, they offer the opportunity to test the cutting edge features.

Canary Helm binaries are stored at get.helm.sh. Here are links to the common builds:

• Linux AMD64
• macOS AMD64
• Experimental Windows AMD64

From Source (Linux, macOS)

Building Helm from source is slightly more work, but is the best way to go if you want to test the latest (pre-release) Helm version.

You must have a working Go environment with dep installed.

$ cd $GOPATH
$ mkdir -p src/helm.sh
$ cd src/helm.sh
$ git clone https://github.com/helm/helm.git
$ cd helm
$ make

If required, it will first install dependencies, rebuild the vendor/ tree, and validate configuration. It will then compile helm and place it in bin/helm.

Conclusion

In most cases, installation is as simple as getting a pre-built helm binary. This document covers additional cases for those who want to do more sophisticated things with Helm.

Once you have the Helm Client successfully installed, you can move on to using Helm to manage charts and add the stable repo.