values from "environments" section are not reachable

[dududko]

Problem

When I pass the object to environment values the helmfile.yaml templating fails.

Here is the example.

releases:
  - name: a-release
    namespace: {{ .Values.namespace.name  }}

environments:
  default:
    values:
      - namespace:
          name: hello-world

helmfile build output:

error during helmfile.yaml.part.0 parsing: template: stringTemplate:3:25: executing "stringTemplate" at <.Values.namespace.name>: map has no entry for key "namespace"

However it works if I pass the value with a flag --state-values-set=namespace.name=test, or when there is no nesting in values

environments:
  default:
    values:
      - namespace: hello-world

Observation

The content of {{ .Values }} is actually correct: map[namespace:map[name:hello-world]], also I can access the namespace field with {{ .Values.namespace }}, but all dict operation on this object fail.

[mumoshu]

@dududko Hey! I believe this is due to how Double Rendering works.

I'm working hard to deprecate it and make a more intuitive alternative as the default in #932, but in the meantime, try moving environments to the beginning of your config, like:

environments:
  default:
    values:
      - namespace:
          name: hello-world

releases:
  - name: a-release
    namespace: {{ .Values.namespace.name  }}

[Aaron-ML]

This also appears to be an issue if you reference base: environments.yaml at the top, I have to manually merge them into the main helmfile to get the values to propagate correctly.

[mumoshu]

Note: I keep getting questions like this for 2 years.

The short answer is to use --- so that the rendering order is more obvious:

environments:
  default:
    values:
      - namespace:
          name: hello-world

---

releases:
  - name: a-release
    namespace: {{ .Values.namespace.name  }}

[mumoshu]

Also see #2036 (comment)