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 Helm Project
The Helm project provides two ways to fetch and install Helm. These are the official methods to get Helm releases. In addition to that, the Helm community provides methods to install Helm through different package managers. Installation through those methods can be found below the official methods.
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.
- Download your desired version
-
Unpack it (
tar -zxvf helm-v3.0.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz) -
Find the
helmbinary 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
.
Note: Helm automated tests are performed for Linux AMD64 only during GitHub Actions builds and releases. Testing of other OSes are the responsibility of the community requesting Helm for the OS in question.
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/main/scripts/get-helm-3
$ chmod 700 get_helm.sh
$ ./get_helm.sh
Yes, you can
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3 | bash
if
you want to live on the edge.
Through Package Managers
The Helm community provides the ability to install Helm through operating system package managers. These are not supported by the Helm project and are not considered trusted 3rd parties.
From Homebrew (macOS)
Members of the Helm 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 Helm community have contributed a package build to Chocolatey . This package is generally up to date.
choco install kubernetes-helm
From Scoop (Windows)
Members of the Helm community have contributed a package build to Scoop . This package is generally up to date.
scoop install helm
From Winget (Windows)
Members of the Helm community have contributed a package build to Winget . This package is generally up to date.
winget install Helm.Helm
From Apt (Debian/Ubuntu)
Members of the Helm community have contributed a package for Apt. This package is generally up to date.
curl https://baltocdn.com/helm/signing.asc | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/helm.gpg > /dev/null
sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https --yes
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/helm.gpg] https://baltocdn.com/helm/stable/debian/ all main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/helm-stable-debian.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install helm
From dnf/yum (fedora)
Since Fedora 35, helm is available on the official repository. You can install helm with invoking:
sudo dnf install helm
From Snap
The Snapcrafters community maintains the Snap version of the Helm package :
sudo snap install helm --classic
From pkg (FreeBSD)
Members of the FreeBSD community have contributed a package build to the FreeBSD Ports Collection . This package is generally up to date.
pkg install helm
Development Builds
In addition to releases you can download or install development snapshots of Helm.
From Canary Builds
"Canary" builds are versions of the Helm software that are built from the latest
main
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:
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.
$ git clone https://github.com/helm/helm.git
$ cd helm
$ make
If required, it will fetch the dependencies and cache them, 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