The .helmignore file

The .helmignore file is used to specify files you don’t want to include in your helm chart.

If this file exists, the helm package command will ignore all the files that match the pattern specified in the .helmignore file while packaging your application.

This can help in avoiding unnecessary or sensitive files or directories from being added in your helm chart.

The .helmignore file supports Unix shell glob matching, relative path matching, and negation (prefixed with !). Only one pattern per line is considered.

Here is an example .helmignore file:

  1. # comment
  3. # Match any file or path named .helmignore
  4. .helmignore
  6. # Match any file or path named .git
  7. .git
  9. # Match any text file
  10. *.txt
  12. # Match only directories named mydir
  13. mydir/
  15. # Match only text files in the top-level directory
  16. /*.txt
  18. # Match only the file foo.txt in the top-level directory
  19. /foo.txt
  21. # Match any file named ab.txt, ac.txt, or ad.txt
  22. a[b-d].txt
  24. # Match any file under subdir matching temp*
  25. */temp*
  27. */*/temp*
  28. temp?

Some notable differences from .gitignore:

  • The ‘**‘ syntax is not supported.
  • The globbing library is Go’s ‘filepath.Match’, not fnmatch(3)
  • Trailing spaces are always ignored (there is no supported escape sequence)
  • There is no support for ‘!’ as a special leading sequence.
  • It does not exclude itself by default, you have to add an explicit entry for .helmignore

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