Helm 4: What’s New In The Open Source Kubernetes Package Manager?

Ever been to Kate’s Place? Most likely, you have. You conscionable cognize it by a different name: Helm.

Helm, an unfastened root package head for Kubernetes that began arsenic a institution hackathon task called Kate’s Place, turned 10 successful 2025. At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, Helm 4 was launched — nan first caller type successful six years.

Why truthful agelong betwixt versions? We’ll get to that. But first, Matt Butcher, laminitis and CEO of Fermyon Technologies, a WebAssembly institution acquired this period by Akamai, told maine astir nan origins of Kate’s Place successful this section of The New Stack Makers

Kate’s Place was a package head for Kubernetes that Butcher and 2 different developers created much than a decade agone astatine a hackathon astatine his then-employer, Deus. The sanction was a play connected “K8s,” and had a coffeehouse theme. “I deliberation we were calling nan packages shots aliases espressos aliases thing for illustration that,” Butcher said, successful this On nan Road section recorded astatine KubeCon successful Atlanta successful November.

At liking was a $75 gift card, which nan Kate’s Place squad won. The adjacent time astatine nan office, Butcher’s telephone rang; Deus’ CEO and CTO were connected nan line.

“And they said, ‘We deliberation this thought of a package head for Kubernetes is conscionable nan correct point astatine conscionable nan correct time,’” he recalled. “Kubernetes was conscionable gaining momentum, and cipher was doing thing for illustration that astatine that point. And so, they said, ’Why don’t we conscionable springiness you a squad and you tin spell build it?’

And I said, ‘That sounds fantastic. I would emotion to do that.’ They said, ‘Just 1 thing. We really dislike nan name.’”

WebAssembly Plugins

Once it acquired its caller name, Helm moved quickly, gaining non-Deus contributors (like Matt Farina, now main designer of unreality autochthonal astatine SUSE, who joined Butcher for this episode). The task was announced astatine nan first KubeCon and it was among nan first projects to postgraduate from nan Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

Helm 4, which went unrecorded during nan astir caller KubeCon, was nan merchandise of a agelong gestation. “The first Helm was astir for matter of months, and past Helm 2 was astir a year,” Farina said. “Then Helm 3 was 3 years.”

After six twelvemonth of Helm 3, “you get immoderate creation debt, things for illustration that. People get crazy ideas you ne'er envisioned successful nan past that requires you to make breaking changes successful a awesome version. And truthful we’ve been moving connected Helm 4 for a while now.”

The latest type includes modernized logging and dependency management, and WebAssembly plugins for portability.

Previously, Helm’s plugin strategy executed retired to nan record system, a method it still supports. “But we tally connected a batch of operating systems — Linux, Mac, Windows — and past a batch of architectures,” Farina said. “It’s not conscionable ARM Intel. We’ve sewage for illustration 5 aliases six different Linux architectures that we support now.

“So if you’re going to constitute an hold for that, you request a measurement to make that portable. And truthful we’ve benignant of churned connected different ways we could make it portable complete nan years. Nothing ever fit. …  past this WebAssembly point came along. It became really, really popular. And truthful successful nan past year, we figured retired really to make WebAssembly-based plugins for Helm.”

Looking ahead, he added, “We re-architected nan internals truthful we tin commencement successful [versions] 4.1 ,4.2, 4.3, and commencement rolling retired immoderate really new, bully features astir charts and nan packages to alteration group who are installing applications to person immoderate really neat caller ways to power nan measurement it’s installed.”

Why ‘Boring’ Features Have Impact

Helm 4’s latest upgrades show a bigger story, Butcher said: really much mature projects person to germinate and accommodate arsenic nan ecosystem grows and usage cases expand.

It’s a kindness of a batch of these highly successful unfastened root projects that opportunity they do 1 point very, very well. …  successful our case, we’ve striven for years to beryllium a really, really bully package head for Kubernetes.”

But now, “So overmuch of nan existent activity now isn’t defining aliases redefining what package guidance is.”

Instead, he added, it’s asking “What are nan features that are going to thief group get worldly done successful much effective ways?”

Features that are now captious see things for illustration logging. “Back erstwhile we created Helm, [it] was like, Oh, well, that’s nan boring point that we’re not really going to deliberation about,” Butcher acknowledged. “Now, it’s like, well, if we tin build bully logging, past nan integration pinch each these different devices will beryllium much uniform. It’s going to prevention level engineers and DevOps folks a batch of clip and energy.”

Such changes, he said, tin beryllium “a clip saver, a money saver.”

Butcher added, “It mightiness not triumph immoderate awards for fanciest, flashiest caller feature, but it surely makes a very existent quality successful nan lives of nan Helm users.”

Check retired nan afloat section to study much astir Helm 4, including really nan task maintainers measurement user feedback, and what’s caller astatine Fermyon and SUSE.

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