Commas in `--set` not escaped the same way as in Helm

[ds-varian]

Before proceeding

• I didn't find a similar issue

Version

1.4.0

How to reproduce

When migrating from helm to nelm, when setting a value which contains a comma it fails parsing

i.e.

.\nelm.exe release install -r XYZ chart --namespace default --set-string sql.host=localhost\,1433

Result

Error: install: construct chart tree: error merging values for chart tree at chart: failed parsing --set-string data: key "1433" has no value

Expected result

Works same as with helm.
Tried different escaping variants, none worked.

Additional information

Any idea? Workaround?

[ilya-lesikov]

From what I see, Helm works the same way:

❯ cat templates/test.yaml
{{ fail ($.Values | toYaml) }}

❯ helm template --set-string 'key1=val1,key2=val2' .
Error: execution error at (mychart/templates/test.yaml:1:3):
key1: val1
key2: val2

What Helm has though that we do not is --set-literal, which helps with this. So I'll make this a feature request for --set-literal. A few more workarounds mentioned here: helm/helm#1556

[ds-varian]

in helm it can be escaped via \ like in my example (and this is how we are using it) but not in nelm

[ilya-lesikov]

@ds-varian

❯ helm version
version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3.17.2", GitCommit:"cc0bbbd6d6276b83880042c1ecb34087e84d41eb", GitTreeState:"clean", GoVersion:"go1.23.7"}

❯ helm template --set-string sql.host=localhost\,1433 .
Error: failed parsing --set-string data: key "1433" has no value

[ds-varian]

The backslash \ escaping is mentioned also in the docs https://helm.sh/docs/intro/using_helm/

Not sure if it is a problem with the helm version or with helm template, but we are using \ escaping of comma for years in production (but NOT via helm template) - I double checked our logs to re-confirm.

[ilya-lesikov]

Alright, I managed to make Helm work (note the double quotes):

helm template  --set "name=value1\,value2"  .

And Nelm works if you do it like this (double quotes inside of single quotes):

nelm chart render --set '"key1=val1\,key2"' .

What a mess. We'll figure it out.

[kuzaxak]

@ilya-lesikov issue is here cmd.Flags().StringSliceVarP parsing comma separated list wrongly. Need to use cmd.Flags().StringArrayVarP instead to have similar behaviour, but that change in core lib may affect other tools.

I'm not sure how to move forward with a fix. Similar issue with env variable parsing:

NELM_CHART_RENDER_SET='name=value1\,value2' go run ./cmd/nelm chart render /tmp/helm-test-chart

Wouldn't work because of CSV split

[ilya-lesikov]

Will probably change the behavior to be Helm-like in v2.