Helmfile apply does not install deleted resources

[schollii]

Steps to reproduce :

1. Install a new set of releases via helmfile apply
2. Use kubectl to delete one of the resources created for one of the released apps, eg kubectl delete svc APP1_NAME
3. Run helmfile apply again: I would expect it to see (when it does a diff) that svc APP1_NAME is missing, and therefore desired state is different from current k8s state, and so I expected it to run a helm upgrade on the app for which k8s resource was deleted. But it does not do that.

There's a chance this is a helm or even helm diff issue (or helmfile diff but I think it uses helm diff plugin), I will see if I can dig some more but meanwhile, I thought this might just be a known limitation or issue.

[andrewnazarov]

More likely it's related to this one and how helm-diff works. IIRC it makes a diff against a Helm state stored in secrets. Because of this, we started thinking of switching to helmfile sync.

[mumoshu]

@schollii @andrewnazarov Probably this would work with the new --three-way-merge option added to helm-diff recently.

https://github.com/databus23/helm-diff/pull/304

[schollii]

Thanks for letting me know @mumoshu. Looks like that could be the solution.

Helmfile doesn't support configuring how it calls helm diff, IIRC... so it'll be a few weeks before this is available in helmfile correct?

[mumoshu]

@schollii You're almost correct but this time I made it configurable via an envvar (https://github.com/databus23/helm-diff/pull/336) too. That means you'll be able to enable the new behavior by running helmfile with HELM_DIFF_THREE_WAY_MERGE=true as helm-diff processes inherit env from the helmfile process.

[mumoshu]

FYI, helm-diff v3.3.0 has been released with the new three-way-merge option 😃