Packaging with Helm

One chart, several environments

Copying manifests per environment guarantees drift. A chart templates the varying parts and takes a values file per environment, so the structure stays in one place.

Helm tracks releases, which gives you an upgrade and rollback story for a whole application rather than object by object.

Templates can become unreadable quickly. Conditionals nested inside loops inside partials produce yaml nobody can predict — keep the logic shallow and render the output to check it.