Fixtures and charts

The charts/ directory contains small deployable fixtures used by the real integration tests. Files used by upload/download scenarios live under features/fixtures/ (e.g. hello.txt, used by REST's file-upload examples). Nothing here is mocked — a fixture exists to prove one real, observable behavior.

charts/test-nginx/

Minimal, off-the-shelf nginx image — a Deployment, Service, and test-hook Pod, zero custom application logic. The default template for a new "just needs a Deployment+Service" fixture. Its label set covers every "recommended" label from Helm's own chart-best-practices guide: app.kubernetes.io/name/instance/managed-by/version and helm.sh/chart.

Quote AppVersion in labels, or helm upgrade fails

app.kubernetes.io/version must be rendered with | quote ({{ .Chart.AppVersion | quote }}) — unquoted, a numeric-looking AppVersion (e.g. 1.27) renders into the labels YAML block as a bare value, which YAML parses as a float instead of a string, and helm upgrade then fails outright decoding it into a map[string]string. A real bug this chart hit once, not a hypothetical one.

charts/test-nginx-0.1.0.tgz is regenerated fresh from charts/test-nginx/ before every run (a BeforeAll hook, a real helm package), so a "Local Archive Chart" scenario can never silently test stale content.

charts/test-dependency/

Exists solely to declare a real dependency (on a small, public metrics-server repo) for exercising helm dependency build/list/update — see Helm. Its Chart.lock and downloaded charts/ subdirectory are real, regenerated artifacts (gitignored), not something to hand-edit.

charts/test-rest-api/

A real, deployed FastAPI application used by every REST scenario. Notably built with no custom container image — its real Python source is mounted from a ConfigMap onto a stock python:3.12-slim, with dependencies installed for real at pod startup (pip install ... && exec uvicorn ...). This avoids needing a custom-image build/push pipeline, at the cost of slower pod startup and no build-time dependency pinning beyond the chart's own values.yaml.

A checksum/app-config pod-template annotation forces a real rollout whenever the ConfigMap's rendered content changes — Kubernetes does not restart a pod just because a referenced ConfigMap's data changed on its own. Health probes are designed to actually be exercised: /health/ready is flippable via PUT /_test/ready?ready=<bool>, used by Kubernetes's readiness-flip example to prove a Pod is really removed from Service endpoints, not restarted.

Adding a new endpoint here is a design decision of its own — see charts/test-rest-api/README.md for the full rationale (storage choices, the ConfigMap-glob mechanism, probe design) before changing this chart.

charts/test-tls-demo/

A namespaced cert-manager Issuer (spec.selfSigned: {}) plus a Certificate requesting a real TLS Secret — used by Kubernetes: TLS Certificates. Deliberately self-signed: this cluster's real default ClusterIssuer is wired to a production Let's Encrypt account over real Route53 DNS-01, and a fixture requesting a certificate from that issuer would issue a real production certificate on every test run. secretTemplate.labels on the Certificate mirrors the chart's own app.kubernetes.io/name/ instance labels, so the resulting Secret is discoverable the same way as any other fixture's objects.

Adding a fixture

Keep fixtures small, deterministic, and useful for proving one behavior at a time. The harness never mocks a Kubernetes API or HTTP server — when adding a fixture, document the observable contract it provides and verify important values (a log substring, an event reason, a field path) from real captured output before writing them into a .feature file.