How to Inspect Helm Values and Manifests

Often when working with installed Helm charts, it is desirable to be able to inspect the current and previous state of a Helm release.

To start, identify the relevant installed Helm release using this command:

helm list -Aa

This command lists all Helm releases across all namespaces in any state. By default, helm list does not show failed Helm releases, which can be confusing when attempting to troubleshoot.

Once the proper Helm release is identified, the Helm values provided to the release can be inspected using this command:

helm get values -n NAMESPACE RELEASE

To see how these provided values are translated into Kubernetes resources, use this command:

helm get manifest -n NAMESPACE RELEASE

Inspecting Previous Helm Revisions

When troubleshooting, it can be useful to compare the previously-working state of a Helm release to its failed state for differences. Helm allows inspecting the values and manifests of previous Helm release revisions, making it easy to compare. Simply run this command to identify the last working revision number:

helm history -n NAMESPACE RELEASE

Then that revision number can be provided as a flag to various Helm commands:

helm get values -n NAMESPACE RELEASE --revision REVISION_NUMBER
helm get manifest -n NAMESPACE RELEASE --revision REVISION_NUMBER