Extend helm-sops to support pass-through of exit codes returned by plugins.

[debayande]

helm-sops summarily returns an exit code of 1 irrespective of the error encountered (and hence, exit code generated) upstream by helm (please cf. https://git.lystit.com/lyst/helm-sops/blob/f6776ac5af1ac0b2e49b67aa6b7f1401b0c44425/main.go#L223). As a result, it breaks workflows where other tools rely on the various exit codes generated by helm to perform further actions. As an example, please consider our workflow for deploying Helm charts.

We use Helmfile to deploy Helm charts. Helmfile's USP is that it allows one to maintain declarative manifests of customisations to a chart and provides the facility to conditionally update them in a cluster. In order for the conditional part to work, Helmfile relies on helm-diff under the hood to check for deltas.

Post-execution, helm returns:

• the exit code of the plugin if a plugin was executed or,
• an exit code of 1 if there was an issue or of 0 if everything worked

If the plugin in question is helm-diff, then one of the following exit codes gets returned:

• 0, if there's no error and no diff,
• 1, if there's an error, or,
• 2, if there no error but a diff

To tie this back to our workflow, an exit code of 2 is used by Helmfile to determine whether to (re)install a chart or not.

Now, introducing helm-sops into our workflow breaks it instantly since it gobbles up the exit code of 2 returned by helm and passes the exit code of 1 to Helmfile instead, causing it to exit with an error.

May I, therefore, request that helm-sops be extended to support pass-through of exit codes returned by plugins?

Thanks.

References

• Is there any list of exit codes from helm ? helm/helm#7669 (comment)
• Check for changes before syncing roboll/helmfile#133
• Return exit code databus23/helm-diff#54
• Allow returning specific exit code for helm plugins helm/helm#4170

[yann-soubeyrand]

Hi @debayande,

I'm also hit by this issue and plan to work on it at some time. Unfortunately, I don't have the necessary time as of now and probably won't before some weeks. Anyway, thanks for your report, I'll keep you updated when things move forward ;-)

[hbollon]

Fixed with the new release 👍