How to automate images from Helm charts to the latest version

[derritter88]

Hello there,

I am using Flux for some time now and in general this works great.
The only way I am having no success is how to keep images from Helm repositories up-to-date.

Currently a working release.yml would look like:

apiVersion: helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v2
kind: HelmRelease
metadata:
  name: searxng
  namespace: searxng
spec:
  interval: 60m0s
  upgrade:
    force: true
  chart:
    spec:
      chart: searxng
      sourceRef:
        kind: HelmRepository
        name: searxng
        namespace: searxng
      interval: 60m0s
  values:
    image:
      tag: latest
      pullPolicy: Always
      interval: 60m0s
    env:
.....

Can anyone shine a light on what I am doing wrong?

[matheuscscp]

Can anyone shine a light on what I am doing wrong?

Definitely not without knowing what issues are you facing 😅 Do you have any specific error messages?

[derritter88]

There is no error message at all.
Flux just does not update the container image.

In my example from above it would be SearXNG which releases a new image once per day.
To currently get the newest image I need to manually redeploy it.

[matheuscscp]

Oh I understand your issue now. It has nothing to do with Flux. What HelmRelease will do here for you is deploying your app (Deployment, probably?) with the container image field something:latest. Flux has absolutely no knowledge that in your helm chart you have these values:

    image:
      tag: latest
      pullPolicy: Always
      interval: 60m0s

So you are basically creating whatever this helm chart creates for you, specifying the values above on the chart.

---

What you can do, is use this: https://fluxcd.io/flux/guides/image-update/

[derritter88]

Okay and as I have specified pullPolicy: Always I will get a new update as soon as I redeploy my Deployment.
Thanks I will try to find a solution for that.

[matheuscscp]

Thanks I will try to find a solution for that.

https://fluxcd.io/flux/guides/image-update/ is the best solution you can get. everything else, keeping the tag latest, will be just bad practices/workarounds

[derritter88]

Yeah, the problem is, that most Helm releases also just mentions "latest" as image tag.

[matheuscscp]

I don't see the point... If the upstream image you use releases new tags, you can simply use the solution I pointed above. You're not obligated to use latest here.