Helm has been called the Kubernetes package manager. It is now part of the CNCF. Dozens of charts are in the upstream repository. In two commands we are going to show you how to install Knative using Helm on your own Kubernetes cluster.
Cannot be simpler than this.
Using the TriggerMesh Chart Repository
Add our Chart repository:
helm repo add tm https://storage.googleapis.com/triggermesh-charts
Once the repository is added you can update your search index with:
And a search for the knative keyword will return our Knative chart.
helm search knative
NAME CHART VERSION APP VERSION DESCRIPTION
tm/knative 0.5.0 0.5.0 A Helm chart for Knative
Our Chart repo is automatically built using Google CloudBuild service. Every merge to our repo will trigger a build of the repository and a new version of the Chart will be available. Checkout our ‘cloudbuild.yaml` and feel free to help us out !
Install Knative
Knative is made of three main components: Build, Serving, and Eventing plus Istio the service mesh (even though Istio can be replaced, for example with Solo.io)
One single command will install the chart and create a Helm release.
After several minutes (~3 minutes), you will have Istio, Knative build and Serving installed with the latest v0.5.0 release. The following Pods will be running.
$ kubectl get pods --all-namespaces
NAMESPACE NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
istio-system cluster-local-gateway-65c8b667c8-wr6zz 1/1 Running 0 2m
istio-system istio-citadel-76bd44d8f7-n8dh8 1/1 Running 0 2m
istio-system istio-egressgateway-b9d56b4f8-rx445 1/1 Running 0 2m
istio-system istio-galley-7db7db89db-h7pqf 1/1 Running 0 2m
istio-system istio-ingressgateway-f77fbc787-g852x 1/1 Running 0 2m
istio-system istio-pilot-69f975bf4f-brbr5 2/2 Running 0 2m
istio-system istio-pilot-69f975bf4f-pj98p 2/2 Running 0 2m
istio-system istio-pilot-69f975bf4f-svghr 2/2 Running 0 2m
istio-system istio-policy-8db48cbcd-2www9 2/2 Running 0 2m
istio-system istio-sidecar-injector-cd54ffccd-qg8mb 1/1 Running 0 2m
istio-system istio-telemetry-d78cd45db-p4wr5 2/2 Running 0 2m
istio-system istio-telemetry-d78cd45db-v8d5k 2/2 Running 0 1m
knative-build build-controller-86f5b5b96d-6j8m9 1/1 Running 0 2m
knative-build build-webhook-6fddd7c6df-28s8j 1/1 Running 0 2m
knative-serving activator-664b5b9598-8gxsh 1/1 Running 0 2m
knative-serving autoscaler-64d5bd84b8-f2m5z 1/1 Running 0 2m
knative-serving controller-658b9d5c6c-7xtrv 1/1 Running 0 2m
knative-serving webhook-5dffbfbb8b-wczfz 1/1 Running 0 2m
...
Use Knative
Now that you have installed your own Knative start using it by following the many samples available. Or contact us for Design and Training services 🙂

Sebastien GoasguenSebastien is a co-founder of TriggerMesh. He has been involved with open source for almost 20 years. Sebastien is an Apache Software Foundation committer and an early contributor to the Kubernetes ecosystem. Around 2014, he became fascinated by the meteoric rise of Docker and decided to learn as much as he could, which led him to author the O’Reilly Docker cookbook. It was this experience that introduced him to Kubernetes, and it was love at first Pod. Sebastien became an early and active participant in the CNCF space, contributing, building, teaching, and innovating. He founded TriggerMesh to push the boundaries of the serverless space and allow all companies to benefit from this new paradigm, even those with on-premises applications.