helm lint: Validate Charts in CI

Examine a chart for possible issues before installing or upgrading.

helm lint checks a chart for structural and best-practice problems without touching a cluster. In CI it is a fast pre-deploy gate that catches missing fields, bad templates, and invalid Chart.yaml early. Pair it with --strict to fail on warnings.

Common flags

PATH - chart directory to lint (positional)
-f values.yaml / --set key=value - lint against specific values
--strict - treat warnings as failures

Example in CI

Lint the chart strictly against production values.

shell

helm lint ./charts/api -f values.prod.yaml --strict

Common errors in CI

[ERROR] Chart.yaml: ... is required - missing required Chart.yaml fields
[ERROR] templates/: parse error ... - invalid Go template syntax
[WARNING] ... (fails build under --strict) - best-practice violation surfaced as warning

Key takeaways

A cluster-free pre-deploy gate for chart correctness.
Use --strict to fail CI on warnings, not just errors.
Catches template and Chart.yaml mistakes before they reach a cluster.

Related guides

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