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Deploying Ncurses in Kubernetes with a Helm Chart

Andrios Robert

• 1 min read

## Why Ncurses in a Helm Chart? Ncurses is a lightweight, text-based UI library with decades of proven reliability. Packaging it with Helm lets you manage its deployment like any other Kubernetes service: consistent, repeatable, and version-controlled. No manual pod creation, no brittle scripts—just a clean chart where configuration lives in values.yaml.

Chart Structure

A solid Ncurses Helm Chart should include:

  • Deployment.yaml for the Ncurses application container.
  • Service.yaml to expose the pod internally or externally.
  • ConfigMap for environment variables and runtime settings.
  • values.yaml to store image tags, resource limits, and Ncurses-specific parameters.

With these files, you can deploy Ncurses to any cluster with a single command:

helm install ncurses ./ncurses-chart

Container Image

Ncurses runs in a terminal, so you need an image that works headless and integrates with Kubernetes logging. Use a minimal base like Alpine or Debian Slim with ncurses precompiled. Keep the image small for faster pulls and reduced attack surface.

Example Dockerfile snippet:

FROM alpine:latest
RUN apk add --no-cache ncurses
CMD ["bash"]

Values Configuration

In values.yaml, define:

  • replicaCount for the number of Ncurses pods.
  • resources to allocate CPU/memory appropriate for your workload.
  • image.repository and image.tag for reproducible builds.
  • Setting for terminal encoding or locale if needed.

Example:

replicaCount: 1
image:
 repository: myrepo/ncurses
 tag: v1.0.0
resources:
 limits:
 cpu: 100m
 memory: 128Mi

Deployment Steps

  1. Build and push your Ncurses container image.
  2. Scaffold your Helm Chart structure.
  3. Configure values.yaml for your target environment.
  4. Deploy with helm install or upgrade with helm upgrade.
  5. Verify logs and interactive session via kubectl exec.

Helm abstracts the complexity of manifest management. Ncurses stays isolated in a single chart, simplifying updates or rollback.

Scaling and Maintenance

Ncurses applications aren’t typical for scaling like stateless web services. Treat them as specialized workloads. Use Kubernetes labels to group resources. Keep chart versions aligned with Ncurses releases. Employ Helm’s built-in rollback if an update breaks your TUI logic.

Your cluster deserves deployments that work every time. Ncurses in a Helm Chart delivers that reliability.

See it live in minutes—deploy a Ncurses Helm Chart with hoop.dev and step straight into your interactive terminal UI in Kubernetes.