Chart/version label noise on each chart upgrade

[danopia]

I've been using helm-diff via helmfile for some time now to post a diff into a Github PR comment. I'd like to do something about the nuisance label change that shows up for every single resource when a chart version changes. I don't mind these labels changing on upgrade, and I feel other helm users view these same labels as noise too.

I didn't see any open discussions around reducing diff noise. I hope opening a new issue is acceptable. This is a pretty straightforward usecase at least.

For example, updating jetstack/cert-manager from 1.8.0 to 1.8.1. The only actual change is the image tag in the deployments. But the printed diff is huge and quickly exceeds Github's max comment size, basically repeating this section for all 48 resources:

$ helmfile [...] diff --context 5

[...]
cert-manager, cert-manager-cainjector, ClusterRole (rbac.authorization.k8s.io) has changed:
...
    labels:
      app: cainjector
      app.kubernetes.io/name: cainjector
      app.kubernetes.io/instance: cert-manager
      app.kubernetes.io/component: "cainjector"
-     app.kubernetes.io/version: "v1.8.0"
+     app.kubernetes.io/version: "v1.8.1"
      app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: Helm
-     helm.sh/chart: cert-manager-v1.8.0
+     helm.sh/chart: cert-manager-v1.8.1
  rules:
    - apiGroups: ["cert-manager.io"]
      resources: ["certificates"]
      verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
    - apiGroups: [""]
...
cert-manager, cert-manager-cainjector, ClusterRoleBinding (rbac.authorization.k8s.io) has changed:
...
    labels:
      app: cainjector
      app.kubernetes.io/name: cainjector
      app.kubernetes.io/instance: cert-manager
      app.kubernetes.io/component: "cainjector"
-     app.kubernetes.io/version: "v1.8.0"
+     app.kubernetes.io/version: "v1.8.1"
      app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: Helm
-     helm.sh/chart: cert-manager-v1.8.0
+     helm.sh/chart: cert-manager-v1.8.1
  roleRef:
    apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
    kind: ClusterRole
    name: cert-manager-cainjector
  subjects:
[...]

Potentially related:

• 371

• 365

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[z0rc]

There is still interest in this.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[z0rc]

Not stale.

[LatVAlY]

Not stale.

[tolleiv]

This would be very valuable

[yxxhero]

hi. all. I will try to optimize code. what do you think of the value of the feature? @danopia @tolleiv @z0rc @LatVAlY @Sajfer

[LatVAlY]

I think as already explained above, reducing the noise on the diff, plus having a checksum by modifying a value the whole checksum would be showed as changed, which is logical but the diff would look so huge, I would say improving this without having to compromise the code quality.💭 as a thought :) Again thank you so much for the efforts!

[yxxhero]

@LatVAlY thanks for your advice. I will add features on top of the code quality prompts.

[z0rc]

For my case https://github.com/databus23/helm-diff/pull/475 was sufficient.

[yxxhero]

yeah. @z0rc it's ok.

[tolleiv]

Comming late for this one, to add some value - --suppress-output-line-regex "(app.kubernetes.io/version|chart):.*" got rid of all the noise so far. Thanks!