Should I prefer Kustomize over Helm

Question

The introduction of Kustomize looks like an effort to fill a gap of natively managing a manifests parameterization in Kuberenetes.

While Helm is a mainstream player in the field. I recognize Helm as not just a templating tool providing much more value (release version management, blue-green deploy support etc)

However while Kustomize is a native feature should I start preferring it assuming it's evolution in the long run?

UPD: while it have been put on hold as opinion based I guess it could be rephrased as What are the Best use cases for either option.

Very interesting question, but I feel this is primarily opinion-based and not ideal for a forum like SO. — Amit Kumar Gupta, Oct 03 '19 at 16:08
I do believe the opinions here might reflect the general trend and possibly affect the development of opensource tools — esboych, Oct 03 '19 at 16:29

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 03 '19 at 20:23

It all depends on what problem you're trying to solve, but I think there's room for both.

There's a lot of power with helm and helm charts. Things like https://hub.helm.sh/ make it very easy to distribute and package app delivery (YAML) in a centralized way.

Kustomize is incredibly powerful too. I have used it to inject parameters into deployments where I didn't own the original YAML or couldn't easily modify it.

I've seen CD pipelines where the deployment is generated from a public helm chart and then kustomize is used to inject additional parameters or requirements.

TL;DR Use the product(s) that solve your problem and understand the value in alternatives.

Should I prefer Kustomize over Helm

1 Answers1