DEVOPSdigest

JFrog announced the launch of ChartCenter, a free, security-focused central repository of Helm charts for the community.

The ChartCenter repository ensures that developers can easily access consistent versions of any publicly available Helm charts, which are currently stored in various locations across the web and can be changed or removed at any time.

“Helm plays a critical role in the fast-growing Kubernetes ecosystem, and it’s important for developers to be able to access and share consistent and secure versions of Helm charts for their applications,” said JFrog CTO and co-founder Yoav Landman. “We are creating a true unified and open repository that allows developers to set up a single, trusted location to consume immutable charts from every chart creator, together with important security information and metadata attached to these charts.”

Helm is an application package manager running atop Kubernetes that simplifies the process of defining, storing, and managing applications through convenient Helm charts. With different Helm charts and versions traditionally stored on various sites across the internet, it has been hard for developers to trust, locate, and learn about them all. Developers also risk losing access to a specific chart if the host removes it. ChartCenter joins the JFrog “centers” family, already encompassing GoCenter, ConanCenter and JCenter as hubs for immutable artifacts. JFrog’s centers are provided as free services, which already support millions of developers globally.

“While security and immutability are very important, another critical concern is observability of transitive dependencies,” said JFrog VP of Community Engineering, Jagan Subramanian. “Installing Helm charts results in pulling in container images and other sub charts that may contain security and license issues, deprecated artifacts, or outdated library dependencies. Making this information readily available promotes higher quality in managing open source dependencies by making the community aware and enables consumers to take proactive measures to safeguard their production deployments”.

JFrog’s ChartCenter addresses this issue by offering a one-stop shop that includes all major Helm charts currently available across the web today, along with important security information and metadata around dependencies and application versions. Organizations can use ChartCenter to find immutable and highly available versions of Helm charts and can even add their own.

ChartCenter was built with the help of Rimas Mocevicius, the co-creator of Helm, to address the needs of the Kubernetes developer community. Along with serving as the first immutable repository for Helm charts, ChartCenter offers super search and other important features and functionality, including:

- Robust metadata about each chart version including downloads, license information, apiVersion, application version, and more!

- Superior search by name, description, and keyword

- Free security scanning that shows vulnerabilities in dependencies

- Ability for developers to add their own charts to the UI

- Dependency tree showing all dependencies of each chart and version

ChartCenter is available to the general public immediately.