With Helm, yea, that's awful to inflict on developers, use Kustomize with Templates instead (https://kustomize.io/)
However, like most companies, Ops is easy place to cut and they commonly reduce us below outstanding workload. However, when they do, they still push the dev teams to deliver so here we are.
Except that kustomize is very limited in annoying ways. Is very badly documented. And is not the same between the `kubectl apply` and `kustomize`. At the end you will pipe through `sed` anyways.
That limitation makes it easier for the devs to understand and use. I've never seen kubectl kustomize be any different locally then what GitOps/Build system will apply to the cluster. Helm is all over the place because templating engine could connect to Kubernetes API and what you see locally is not what you will get on cluster.
Helm is great idea and awesome for software that is not exactly sure what cluster environment will look. However, for internal software, almost all companies have clear defined Kubernetes environments where you don't have to worry about any of that and kustomize works great.
Use least amount of power instead of most amount of power. If kustomize no longer works for you, Helm is always there if you feel like torturing everyone. FluxCD/Argo support both happily.
To be clear, I didn't not mean to imply that I find Helm to be good at all. I am with you on all the negatives here.
I think the general idea behind kustomize is great. Sadly the execution is a mess of complicated code, with a billion of useless abstractions. Culminating into a tool that doesn't do what it promises. Including infinite loops. Yes I have had it get stuck on infinite loops during text matching.
And before anybody tells me to contribute to kustomize instead of complaining:
1) pay me for it.
2) actually don't, I don't want to touch this codebase. Reading it was traumatizing enough.
cdk8s+ ... you get type checking with TypeScript, you can do whatever because you have a normal runtime (Node/Deno/Bun) no need to live with crude tools
With Helm, yea, that's awful to inflict on developers, use Kustomize with Templates instead (https://kustomize.io/)
However, like most companies, Ops is easy place to cut and they commonly reduce us below outstanding workload. However, when they do, they still push the dev teams to deliver so here we are.