Epic: Helm as first-class deploy tool

[dfarrell07]

We've primarily focused on using subctl to deploy the Operator so far. With few Helm jobs running in other repos, we frequently break Helm deployments and don't know about it quickly.

My understanding is that we want to support Helm at last as much as subctl. We've also seen a substantial number of K8s users start trying Submariner using Helm.

The end goal here is to use Helm+Operator as the default deployment tool and for Helm to be part of the automated release process.

Bugs:

• Lighthouse Helm jobs broken (Helm jobs broke on last commit lighthouse#504)
  • Fix helm E2E jobs lighthouse#519
• K8s version breaks when none passed through GHA
  • clusters.sh: handle empty k8s_version shipyard#580
• Use CNCF-wording for maintainers 52d894c
• Add required apiVersion field to Chart.yaml 52d894c
• Name RBAC fields to match K8s requirements 5364eac
• Track down and fix flaky failures.
• Avoid raw URLs in maintainer tables norwoodj/helm-docs#102

Features:

• Refactor RBAC to give submariner-operator permission to manage fine-details of RBAC and remove RBAC handling from Helm.
  • RBAC should be auto-generated submariner-operator#1105
• Use the Operator to create the Broker, not the submariner-k8s-broker chart #134
• Subctl over Helm over Operator?
• Use a charts/ directory Move all charts into /charts dir #88

Testing:

• Use Helm over Operator as default deploy tool #137
• Add "canary" Helm over Operator jobs to select repos.
  • Add Helm over Operator job to full E2E submariner-operator#1409 / Add Helm over Operator job to full E2E dfarrell07/submariner-operator#3
• Add vxlan cable driver to test matrix #149
• Add helm/chart-testing linting/testing #68
  • Add chart-testing linting, fix errors #147
• Add vxlan cable driver to test matrix #149
• Split E2E into default and full #148
• Add bot config for labeling when approved #153

Release:

• Include Helm Charts in release process releases#87

Docs:

• Add helm-docs automatic docs generation/testing #69
  • Add docs for each chart and docs generation/linting #150
  • Extract helm-docs generation/testing to Makefile #155
• Add inline docs for params so READMEs generated by helm-docs can consume them into tables.
• Update descriptions of GH repos submariner-website#504.
• Add CII and merged-CI badges to README #142
• Update README install docs, Helm over Operator submariner#1381
• Update getting started deployment docs submariner-website#530
• Tweaks to README install docs submariner#1396

[dfarrell07]

Discussions on the Automation Sync today included starting from scratch with the Helm carts. That might be the quickest path to a quality result (so much needs to be changed with the current charts) and would allow us a good Helm learning opportunity along the way.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had activity for 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Please make a comment if this issue/pr is still valid. Thank you for your contributions.

[dfarrell07]

We should make sure the release process with the GH page works for versioned releases, branches.

[maayanf24]

This has been discussed on the issue scrub meeting and decided to close for now.
If this will become a priority it can be reopened.
Individual items are tracked