Tekton Concepts
External
Internal
Overview
Tekton is a cloud-native solution for building CI/CD pipelines. Tekton installs and runs as an extension on your Kubernetes cluster and uses the well-established Kubernetes resource model. Tekton workloads execute inside Kubernetes containers. It is implemented as a set of Kubernetes Custom Resources. It has several components: Tekton Pipelines, Tekton CLI and Tekton Catalog. Once deployed, Tekton can be accessed via Tekton CLI commands or API calls. Tekton is part of the CD Foundation, a Linux Foundation project.
Tekton Runtime Model
Tekton Pipelines tracks the state of a pipeline using Kubernetes annotations, which are projected inside each step container in the form of files with the Kubernetes Downward API. The step container entrypoint binary watches these projected files and will only start the command the step is supposed to execute only if a specific annotation appears as file. For more details see:
In addition, Tekton Pipelines schedules some containers to run automatically before and after the step containers to support built-in features such as the retrieval of input resources and the uploading the outputs to wherever they are supposed to go.
Task
ClusterTask
A task is available in a certain namespace, while a ClusterTask is available across the entire cluster. A ClusterTask behaves identically to a task. When declaring a ClusterTask in the pipeline definition, the kind sub-field of the taskRef should be explicitly set to ClusterTask. If not specified, kind defaults to Task.
apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1beta1
kind: Pipeline
metadata:
[...]
spec:
tasks:
- name: some-cluster-task
taskRef:
name: some-task
kind: ClusterTask
...
Custom Task and Run
Step
TaskRun
Include discussion on pod templates:
Pipeline
PipelineRun
Workspaces
Resource
Result
Events
Bundles
Conditions
Conditions are deprecated, use when expressions instead.
Parameters
Resource Management
This section contains a discussion on LimitRange.
Security
Metrics
Tekton Components
Tekton Pipelines
Tekton Pipelines is the component that implements the core functionality of Tekton and sets the foundation for other components. It is implemented as a set of Kubernetes Custom Resources.
Tekton Pipeline Runtime
Tekton Pipelines Controller
Tekton Pipelines Webhook
Tekton Pipeline Operations
Tekton CLI
Tekton API
Tekton APIs are currently available for Pipelines and Triggers allow you to programmatically interact with the Tekton components.
Tekton Catalog
Tekton Hub
Tekton Hub is a web GUI to access Tekton Catalog.
Tekton Triggers
Tekton Triggers provide triggers, which allow instantiating pipelines based on events (a PR merge, etc.)
TO PROCESS: https://tekton.dev/docs/triggers/
Trigger
Implemented as part of the Tekton Triggers component.
Tekton Dashboard
Tekton Dashboard is the web GUI that displays information about pipeline execution.
Tekton Operator
Tekton Operator is the implementation of the Kubernetes Operator pattern that assists with the operation of the Tekton projects.
HA Support
Programming Model
Process Task Authoring Recommendations: https://github.com/tektoncd/catalog/blob/main/recommendations.md
Variables
TO PROCESS:
- https://tekton.dev/docs/pipelines/variables/
- https://tekton.dev/docs/pipelines/tasks/#using-variable-substitution
- Variables available in a Task https://tekton.dev/docs/pipelines/variables/#variables-available-in-a-task
- Variables available in a Pipeline https://tekton.dev/docs/pipelines/variables/#variables-available-in-a-pipeline
- Fields that accept variable substitutions: https://tekton.dev/docs/pipelines/variables/#fields-that-accept-variable-substitutions
- Using variable substitution in pipelines: https://tekton.dev/docs/pipelines/pipelines/#using-variable-substitution
Code Examples
TO PROCESS:
- Code Examples: https://tekton.dev/docs/pipelines/tasks/#code-examples
- Code Examples: https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/tree/main/examples
- TaskRun code examples: https://tekton.dev/docs/pipelines/taskruns/#code-examples
- https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/blob/release-v0.35.x/examples/v1beta1/taskruns/run-steps-as-non-root.yaml
- Pipeline code examples: https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/tree/main/examples
- Variable substitution: https://tekton.dev/docs/pipelines/tasks/#using-variable-substitution
Start the list here:
- How to do this
- How to do that