Transitioning Bitnami Helm charts to OCI for enhanced security, efficiency, and compatibility

[carrodher]

In January 2022, we announced the general availability of Helm charts in OCI registries, coinciding with the release of Helm version 3.8.0. In January 2023, Bitnami began populating and distributing the largest and most up-to-date Open-Source catalog of Helm charts in OCI format in Docker Hub.

Since then, the adoption of the Bitnami Helm charts in OCI format has proliferated. Because charts stored in container registries follow OCI standards, developers can use many of the same tools for Helm charts that they use with container images. This makes integrating Helm into automated pipelines easier and uses modern infrastructure-as-code and deployment techniques like GitOps.

We would like to go further and help the Helm community to continue adopting the OCI distribution format. Starting November the 18th, 2024, Bitnami Helm charts will default to OCI. All the charts will remain Open Source and publicly available at https://hub.docker.com/u/bitnamicharts.

What will happen to the current index.yaml stored at charts.bitnami.com?

To guarantee a smoother transition, the index.yaml will continue to exist as an OCI artifact in Docker Hub. To maintain backward compatibility, users who still use the helm repo add command can continue using this approach. The Helm tooling manages this transparently.

The index.yaml will change the “URL” option to point to the new OCI versions of Helm charts:

  urls:
-    - https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami/airflow-18.3.2.tgz
+    - oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/airflow:18.3.2

Users should not see any change when deploying Helm charts. They must use a Helm CLI greater than 3.8.0 to deploy them.

What will happen to the Bitnami Helm charts in tgz format?

The Bitnami Helm charts in tgz format will no longer be updated. Previous versions since 2023 are available at Docker Hub and it is easy to get the tgz format via Helm command:

$ helm pull oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/airflow –version 18.3.2

Older versions will remain available at the same URL for 6 months to ensure a smooth transition. Do not hesitate to contact us for any questions or suggestions at https://github.com/bitnami/charts/issues

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For more information on this topic, check out our latest blog post: Bitnami Helm Charts Moving to OCI.