Teardown / Uninstall

Completely uninstalling a SPAR release

helm uninstall removes the SPAR workloads, but it does not drop the PostgreSQL database and role — those live inside the shared commons-postgresql instance and are not owned by the Helm release, so they survive. A subchart Job (postgres-init) and any retained PVs also linger. The repository ships an uninstall script that cleans all of this up safely.

Script: deployment/scripts/uninstall-spar.sh

What it does

In order:

1. helm uninstall <release> — SPAR workloads, services, Helm-owned secrets/configmaps, istio virtualservices/gateways, etc.

2. Deletes leftover subchart Jobs and their Pods (postgres-init).

3. Sweeps leftover Secrets/ConfigMaps labelled app.kubernetes.io/instance=<release>.

4. Drops the Postgres database and role for this release, by kubectl exec into the Postgres pod (it terminates connections, then DROP DATABASE / DROP ROLE).

5. Deletes PVCs labelled with the release.

6. Deletes PVs still bound to those PVCs (typically Released PVs created with reclaimPolicy=Retain).

Database dropped

Only the database this chart's postgres-init created:

• <release-with-underscores> — e.g. release spar → database spar, role spar_user.

It does not drop databases owned by other components.

What it preserves

The script never deletes the PostgreSQL pod/instance (commons-postgresql). It only kubectl execs into it to drop SPAR's own database and role. Other databases and all other components are left untouched.

Usage

cd spar/deployment/scripts

# Always dry-run first — prints the full blast radius, changes nothing:
./uninstall-spar.sh --namespace trial --dry-run

# For real (prompts you to type the release name to confirm):
./uninstall-spar.sh --namespace trial

# Non-interactive (CI / scripted):
./uninstall-spar.sh --namespace trial --yes

Options

Flag	Default	Description
--namespace, -n	(required)	Release namespace.
--release	spar	Helm release name (determines the DB/role names).
--postgres-release	commons-postgresql	Postgres Helm release to exec into.
--postgres-namespace	same as --namespace	Namespace of the Postgres instance.
--keep-pvs	off	Delete PVCs but keep the PVs.
--dry-run	off	Print actions, change nothing.
--yes, -y	off	Skip the interactive confirmation.

Requires: kubectl (cluster admin), helm, jq, and bash 4+.