[mkingston]

`kubectl apply --prune` should nominally do this. Irritatingly (I acknowledge I'm almost as responsible as anyone else for doing something about this), it's had this disclaimer on it for quite some time now:

> Alpha Disclaimer: the --prune functionality is not yet complete. Do not use unless you are aware of what the current state is. See ⟨https://issues.k8s.io/34274⟩.

I haven't used it in anger, so I can't add any disclaimer or otherwise of my own.

kpt is the recent Google-ordained (AFAICT) solution to this problem, but is ot yet at v1.

You could also resolve this yourself by either:

* versioning with labels and deleting all resources with labels indicating older versions

* using helm _only_ in the last mile, for pruning