Testing

The chart’s regression suite uses helm-unittest — rendering-only, no live cluster. This page is the practical cookbook; for the design rationale see ADR 018. For the live-cluster suite that proves rendered manifests actually work against real controllers, see 03-e2e-testing.md.

Layout

• One suite per template: tests/<template>_test.yaml covers templates/<template>.yaml.
• Shared values blocks live in tests/fixtures/. Use a fixture when the same set: block would repeat across two or more tests, or when the values block exceeds ~10 lines.

Run the full suite:

helm unittest .

Two patterns — pick one per test

Inline set: for short cases:

- it: should render Service when enabled
  set:
    image.repository: nginx
    image.tag: alpine
    deployments.web.enabled: true
    deployments.web.service.enabled: true
    deployments.web.service.port: 80
  asserts:
    - isKind:
        of: Service

Fixture file for non-trivial inputs:

- it: should render KEDA ScaledObject for the worker
  values:
    - fixtures/keda-deployment.yaml
  asserts:
    - isKind:
        of: ScaledObject
    - matchRegex:
        path: metadata.name
        pattern: -worker$

The asserts you’ll need

# Verify the rendered kind
- isKind:
    of: Deployment

# Exact field value
- equal:
    path: spec.replicas
    value: 3

# Field shape match
- matchRegex:
    path: spec.template.spec.containers[0].image
    pattern: nginx:.+

# Field absent
- notExists:
    path: spec.replicas
# (or its synonym for null fields)
- isNull:
    path: spec.replicas

# Field present
- isNotNull:
    path: spec.metrics

# Document count in multi-doc render
- hasDocuments:
    count: 2

# Negative test — assert the template fails with a specific message
- failedTemplate:
    errorMessage: "deployments.web: hpa.enabled and keda.enabled are mutually exclusive — both manage spec.replicas. Pick one."

Add a test in three steps

1. Find the closest existing it: block in the right tests/<template>_test.yaml. Copy it.
2. Tweak set: (or replace it with values: [fixtures/<name>.yaml]) to reflect the scenario you’re adding. Add or adjust asserts: to match the expected output.
3. Run helm unittest . — green or fix.

CI runs the same command on every PR; tests passing locally is the same signal as CI green.