Auto DevOps : Helm cannot upgrade over initial failed release

Steps to reproduce

1. Have a failed Helm release (e.g. forgot to set base domain)
2. Fix issue from 1, run Auto DevOps pipeline again
3. Failure below occurs

$ deploy
secret "review-secrets-ayz3io-secret" deleted
secret "review-secrets-ayz3io-secret" replaced
Initializing...
Error: UPGRADE FAILED: "review-secrets-ayz3io" has no deployed releases
ERROR: Job failed: exit code 1

Notes

• This seems to only occur if ALL releases for that chart have only ever failed.
• If there is a successful release in the past, then Helm can upgrade over a previously failed release

Workaround

As shown by @tnir in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/54760#note_146627376

1. Run the following script locally. For the production job, the <chart-name> is production. For other jobs, run helm ls which should show you which chart to delete.

$ tiller -version
v2.13.0
$ export KUBE_NAMESPACE=<CI_PROJECT_NAME>-<CI_PROJECT_ID>
$ export TILLER_NAMESPACE=$KUBE_NAMESPACE
$ tiller -listen localhost:44134 &
[1] 28659
$ export HELM_HOST="localhost:44134"
$ helm init --client-only
$ helm delete <chart-name> --purge --tiller-namespace $KUBE_NAMESPACE
release "<chart-name>" deleted

2. Retry the deploy job

Links

See also discussion in https://github.com/helm/helm/issues/3208 and https://github.com/helm/helm/issues/3353