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Reloader

Reloader can watch changes in ConfigMap and Secret and do rolling upgrades on Pods with their associated DeploymentConfigs, Deployments, Daemonsets Statefulsets and Rollouts.

Upstream: https://github.com/stakater/Reloader

Why it's in KubeAid​

Without it, a ConfigMap/Secret edit (e.g. rotated credentials, updated config) sits inert until something else bounces the pods. Reloader closes that gap cluster-wide, so app teams don't have to wire their own restart-on-config-change logic per Deployment.

Key values​

Chart wraps the upstream reloader subchart (argocd-helm-charts/reloader/values.yaml):

  • reloader.reloader.watchGlobally: true — watches ConfigMaps/Secrets across all namespaces, not just its own.
  • reloader.reloader.reloadOnCreate: true — also triggers on resource creation, not just updates.
  • reloader.reloader.serviceMonitor.enabled: true — Reloader's own metrics get scraped by Prometheus.
  • deployment.containerSecurityContext — runs with all capabilities dropped, no privilege escalation, read-only root filesystem, and the RuntimeDefault seccomp profile.

How to use Reloader​

For a Deployment called foo have a ConfigMap called foo-configmap or Secret called foo-secret or both. Then add your annotation (by default reloader.stakater.com/auto) to main metadata of your Deployment.

kind: Deployment
metadata:
  annotations:
    reloader.stakater.com/auto: "true"
spec:
  template:
    metadata:

This will discover deploymentconfigs/deployments/daemonsets/statefulset/rollouts automatically where foo-configmap or foo-secret is being used either via environment variable or from volume mount. And it will perform rolling upgrade on related pods when foo-configmap or foo-secretare updated.

Refer