Nelm is a Helm 4 alternative. It is a Kubernetes deployment tool that manages Helm Charts and deploys them to Kubernetes. It is also the deployment engine of werf. Nelm does everything that Helm does, but better, and even quite some on top of it. Nelm is based on an improved and partially rewritten Helm codebase, to introduce:
terraform plan-like capabilities;
- improved CRD management;
- out-of-the-box secrets management;
- advanced resource ordering capabilities;
- advanced resource lifecycle capabilities;
- improved resource state/error tracking;
- continuous printing of logs, events, resource statuses, and errors during deployment;
- fixed hundreds of Helm bugs, e.g. "no matches for kind Deployment in version apps/v1beta1";
- performance and stability improvements and more.
The Nelm goal is to provide a modern alternative to Helm, with long-standing issues fixed and many new major features introduced. Nelm moves fast, but our focus remains on Helm Chart and Release compatibility, to ease the migration from Helm.
Nelm is production-ready: as the werf deployment engine, it was battle-tested across thousands of projects for years.

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