Changing upgrade-check behavior when version is not found

Daniel Marksrequested to merge
daniel.marks/gitlab:fix/chart-version-check-in-upgrade-checker into master

What does this MR do?

Changing upgrade-check behavior when version is not found

This check was introduced in 2019 to protect the user from a very specific upgrade that is not supported. Namely the upgrade from a chart version pre 1.9.4. The chart-info configmap that holds the information for /chart-info/gitlabVersion was introduced in 1.9.4 and you had to upgrade to the latest 1.9.x release before going on to 2.x.

The assumption behind this check is that, if the configmap (and in consequence the optionally mounted files in the upgrade-check pod) do not exist, that the previously installed version must be something pre 1.9.4.

Now in 2025 we can savely assume that no one is upgrading from pre 1.9.4 directly to a chart version 9.6.0 or later. Instead we should assume that the helm hook got triggered in a situation where it should not have been: a fresh install - as described in #2979 (closed) and #4661. Some tools like ArgoCD are using helm as templating engine and are not properly calling the hooks as helm would do. Resulting in the upgrade-checker hook being called on a fresh install where the chart-info config map is not present (yet).

Related issues

Fixes #2979 (closed) Fixes #4661

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Edited by Daniel Marks

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