k8app

Modern Helm charts for Kubernetes applications, optimized for GitOps workflows and cloud-native deployments.

🚀 Quick Start

Add this repository to Helm:

helm repo add k8app https://d7561985.github.io/k8app
helm repo update

Install with minimal configuration:

helm install myapp k8app/app \
  --set appName=myapp \
  --set environment=dev \
  --set image.repository=myorg/myapp \
  --set image.tag=v1.0.0

📦 Available Charts

app - Main Application Chart

Full-featured Helm chart for deploying cloud-native applications with:

• Deployments - Main application containers with health checks, resources, scaling
• Workers - Background job processors with individual scaling and configuration
• Jobs - One-time tasks like migrations and data imports
• CronJobs - Scheduled tasks like backups and cleanup
• Services - ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer, and Headless services
• Ingress/Gateway API - HTTP routing with TLS termination
• Secrets Management - AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault integration
• ConfigMaps - Environment variables and configuration files
• Storage - Persistent volumes, shared volumes, EFS integration
• Monitoring - Prometheus ServiceMonitor, alerting rules
• Autoscaling - HPA with CPU, memory, and custom metrics
• RBAC - Service accounts with fine-grained permissions
• Security - Pod security contexts, network policies

📖 Full Documentation

tel - Telemetry Stack

Observability stack with OpenTelemetry, Grafana, and Tempo for distributed tracing.

🛠 Development

For Application Developers

Use the simplified developer configuration:

# values.yaml - Minimal developer config  
appName: "myapp"
environment: "dev"

image:
  repository: "myorg/myapp"
  tag: "v1.2.3"

# Environment variables
configmap:
  LOG_LEVEL: "debug"
  API_URL: "https://api.dev.example.com"

# Secrets from your secret management system
secrets:
  DB_PASSWORD: "myapp/{env}/database"
  API_KEY: "shared/{env}/external-api"

# Expose your app
gateway:
  enabled: true
  hostname: "myapp-dev.company.com"

See values.dev.example.yaml for a complete developer-friendly example.

For DevOps/Infrastructure Teams

Use the full configuration with all features:

See values.example.yaml for enterprise-grade configuration covering:

• Multi-region deployments
• Advanced networking
• Security hardening
• Observability integration
• Resource management
• Backup and disaster recovery

📚 Documentation

• Application Chart Guide - Complete usage guide
• Contributing Guide - Development practices and guidelines
• Changelog - Version history and breaking changes
• Examples - Real-world configuration examples

🏗 Architecture Principles

• Convention over Configuration - Sensible defaults, minimal required config
• DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) - Reusable templates and helpers
• Zero-Config Defaults - Works out of the box with just app name and image
• Backward Compatibility - Smooth upgrades without breaking changes
• Cloud-Native First - Optimized for Kubernetes and cloud platforms

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see our Contributing Guide for:

• Development workflow
• Code style guidelines
• Testing requirements
• Release process

📋 Requirements

• Kubernetes: 1.19+
• Helm: 3.8+
• Gateway API (optional): v0.5.0+ for advanced routing
• Prometheus Operator (optional): For ServiceMonitor CRDs

⚡ Features Comparison

Feature	Basic Deploy	k8app
Single container deployment	✅	✅
Background workers	❌	✅
Scheduled jobs (cron)	❌	✅
One-time jobs (migrations)	❌	✅
Secrets management	Manual	✅ Automated
Config file mounting	Manual	✅ Built-in
Monitoring integration	Manual	✅ Auto-configured
Autoscaling	Manual	✅ Declarative
Security hardening	Manual	✅ Best practices
Multi-environment support	Manual	✅ Built-in
Rollback safety	Basic	✅ Advanced

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.