Getting Started¶

In this guide you will learn how to deploy a simple Hello World image to Google Cloud Run using Helmless. Read what is Helmless first if you want to understand how it works. See the architecture for more information on how to adopt it to other cloud providers.

Deploying from a CI/CD pipeline is covered in a later guide.

Prerequisites¶

• A Google Cloud account
• The Google Cloud CLI
• The Helm CLI

Make sure you have a Google Cloud project ready. If you don't have one yet, create a new one using the Google Cloud Console.

Deploying Your First Helmless Service¶

gcloud auth login
gcloud config set project <your-project-id>
gcloud config set run/region <your-region> # e.g. europe-west1

mkdir -p helmless
cat <<EOF > helmless/values.yaml
# yaml-language-server: \$schema=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helmless/helmless/main/charts/cloudrun/service/values.schema.json
name: helmless-service
region: $(gcloud config get run/region)
project: $(gcloud config get project)
image: 'us-docker.pkg.dev/cloudrun/container/hello'
env:
  COLOR: 'blue'
EOF

helm template oci://ghcr.io/helmless/google-cloudrun-service \
  -f helmless/values.yaml \
  > helmless/google-cloudrun-service.manifest.yaml

gcloud run services replace helmless/google-cloudrun-service.manifest.yaml

gcloud run services proxy helmless-service

1. Setting the project and region is only required when deploying locally. When deploying from a CI/CD pipeline the project and region are automatically extracted from the rendered manifest.
2. Helmless uses the Helm pattern of a values.yaml file to configure the service. You can store this anywhere in your repository, but for this example we will use the helmless directory.
3. helm template is the command to template a Helm chart and in Helmless used to create create a cloud provider specific service manifest.
4. By default Cloud Run services are not publicly accessible, so you need to start the Cloud Run proxy to access the service locally.

Cleaning up¶

You can delete the service using the gcloud run services delete command.

gcloud run services delete helmless-service

Next Steps¶

From here you can head back to the overview to learn more about Helmless for Google Cloud Run or jump to the next guide to learn how to deploy from a CI/CD pipeline using Github Actions.