Thanks for opening this discussion, Robert! It definitely looks like we can improve helm UX.
All: WDYT about hosting helm index for all supported releases on downloads.apache.org (as before), but moving old charts to the archive? When a new RC comes out it will have helm index updates according to what version is the latest at the time of release and some links (re-)pointing to the archive. When the RC is approved, its helm index will simply replace the old one on downloads.apache.org. The archive site will _not_ have a helm index, only chart tar files, signatures, etc. Link changes should not be a problem for automated tools, I hope. The helm index will be truncated as the community decides to "unsupport" old releases (with proper release note notifications, etc.). Cheers, Dmitri. On Thu, Jan 22, 2026 at 6:43 AM Robert Stupp <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > The issue #3500 mentions an issue with (perma)links to Helm charts to > downloads.a.o. Once a new release is published, the previously working link > will no longer work, as old releases, although available on archive.a.o get > removed from downloads.a.o. That's just how it works. > > For helm charts referenced by their URL and potential user-automation to > grab other binary artifacts, a new release kind-of "suddenly" breaks user > environments/workflows. > > What do you guys think about the following? > > We can attach the binary artifacts to GitHub releases and/or publish those > to Maven Central - and adjust the documented download links to either of > these locations? > > For the Helm charts, the situation is a bit more complex, because of the > index.yaml. While it is correct on downloads.a.o [1], the one on > archive.a.o [2] is missing older releases. But since the content of > archive.a.o is taken from downloads.a.o, there's not much we can do about > it. > An option could be to have an index.yaml elsewhere, potentially on a > separate web site like https://polaris-charts.apache.org/ that only > contains an ever-growing index.yaml file, which is updated during a release > publication using 'helm repo index . --merge index.yaml --url ...', where > that URL points to the helm package, which can be a GitHub release artifact > or some other location. > > Robert > > [3500] https://github.com/apache/polaris/issues/3500 > [1] https://downloads.apache.org/incubator/polaris/helm-chart/index.yaml > [2] > https://archive.apache.org/dist/incubator/polaris/helm-chart/index.yaml >
