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Publishes a comprehensive overview of Tekton.
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| # Overview of Tekton | ||
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| This document describes Tekton, its components, as well as its benefits and caveats. It also describes the most | ||
| common usage scenarios for Tekton. | ||
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| ## What is Tekton? | ||
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| Tekton is a cloud-native solution for building CI/CD pipelines. It consists of Tekton Pipelines, which provides | ||
| the building blocks, and of supporting components, such as Tekton CLI and Tekton Catalog, that make Tekton a complete | ||
| ecosystem. Tekton is part of the [CD Foundation](https://cd.foundation/), a | ||
| [Linux Foundation](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/projects/) project. | ||
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| Tekton installs and runs as an extension on a Kubernetes cluster and comprises a set of Kubernetes Custom Resources | ||
| that define the building blocks you can create and reuse for your pipelines. Once installed, Tekton Pipelines becomes | ||
| available via the Kubernetes CLI (kubectl) and via API calls, just like pods and other resources. | ||
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| ## Who uses Tekton? | ||
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| Tekton users typically fall into the following categories: | ||
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| - **Platform engineers** who build CI/CD systems for the developers in their organization. | ||
| - **Developers** who use those CI/CD systems to do their work. | ||
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| ## What are the benefits of Tekton? | ||
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| Tekton provides the following benefits to builders and users of CI/CD systems: | ||
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| - **Customizable.** Tekton entities are fully customizable, allowing for a high degree of flexibility. Platform engineers | ||
| can define a highly detailed catalog of building blocks for developers to use in a wide variety of scenarios. | ||
| - **Reusable.** Tekton entities are fully portable, so once defined, anyone within the organization can use a given | ||
| pipeline and reuse its building blocks. This allows developers to quickly build complex pipelines without "reinventing | ||
| the wheel." | ||
| - **Expandable.** Tekton Catalog is a community-driven repository of Tekton building blocks. You can quickly create new and | ||
| expand existing pipelines using pre-made components from the Tekton Catalog. | ||
| - **Standardized.** 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. | ||
| - **Scalable.** To increase your workload capacity, you can simply add nodes to your cluster. Tekton scales with your cluster | ||
| without the need to redefine your resource allocations or any other modifications to your pipelines. | ||
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| ## What are the components of Tekton? | ||
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| Tekton consists of the following components: | ||
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| - **[Tekton Pipelines](https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/blob/master/docs/README.md)** is the foundation of Tekton. It | ||
| defines a set of Kubernetes [Custom Resources](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/extend-kubernetes/api-extension/custom-resources/) | ||
| that act as building blocks from which you can assemble CI/CD pipelines. | ||
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| - **[Tekton Triggers](https://github.com/tektoncd/triggers/blob/master/README.md)** allows you to instantiate pipelines based on events. | ||
| For example, you can trigger the instantiation and execution of a pipeline every time a PR is merged against a GitHub repository. You | ||
| can also build a user interface that launches specific Tekton triggers. | ||
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| - **[Tekton CLI](https://github.com/tektoncd/cli/blob/master/README.md)** provides a command-line interface called `tkn`, built on top | ||
| of the Kubernetes CLI, that allows you to interact with Tekton. | ||
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| - **[Tekton Dashboard](https://github.com/tektoncd/dashboard/blob/master/README.md)** is a Web-based graphical interface for Tekton | ||
| Pipelines that displays information about the execution of your pipelines. It is currently a work-in-progress. | ||
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| - **[Tekton Catalog](https://github.com/tektoncd/catalog/blob/v1beta1/README.md)** is a repository of high-quality, community-contributed | ||
| Tekton building blocks - `Tasks`, `Pipelines`, and so on - that are ready for use in your own pipelines. | ||
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| - **[Tekton Hub](https://github.com/tektoncd/hub/blob/master/README.md)** is a Web-based graphical interface for accessing the Tekton Catalog. | ||
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| - **[Tekton Operator](https://github.com/tektoncd/operator/blob/master/README.md)** is a Kubernetes [Operator pattern](https://operatorhub.io/what-is-an-operator) | ||
| that allows you to install, update, and remove Tekton projects on your Kubernetes cluster. | ||
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| ## How do I work with Tekton? | ||
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| To install Tekton, you need a Kubernetes cluster running a | ||
| [version of Kubernetes specified for the current Tekton release](https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/#want-to-start-using-pipelines). | ||
| Once installed, you can interact with Tekton using one of the following: | ||
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| - **[The tkn CLI](https://github.com/tektoncd/cli/blob/master/README.md)**, also known as the Tekton CLI, is the preferred command-line method | ||
| for interacting with Tekton. `tkn` provides a quick and streamlined experience, including high-level commands and color coding. To use it, | ||
| you only need to be familiar with Tekton. | ||
| - **[The kubectl CLI](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubectl/overview/)**, also known as the Kubernetes CLI, provides substantially more | ||
| granularity for controlling Tekton at the expense of higher complexity. Interacting with Tekton via kubectl is typically reserved for debugging | ||
| your pipelines and troubleshooting your builds. | ||
| - **[The Tekton APIs](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/access-kubernetes-api/custom-resources/custom-resource-definitions/)**, currently | ||
| available for [Pipelines](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/pkg/apis/pipeline/v1beta1?tab=doc) and | ||
| [Triggers](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/tektoncd/[email protected]/pkg/apis/triggers/v1alpha1?tab=doc), allow you to programmatically interact | ||
| with Tekton components. This is typically reserved for highly customized CI/CD systems. In most scenarios, `tkn` and `kubectl` are the preferred | ||
| methods of controlling Tekton. | ||
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| We also recommend having the following items configured on your Kubernetes cluster: | ||
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| - Persistent volume claims for specifying inputs and outputs. | ||
| - Permissions appropriate to your environment and business needs. | ||
| - Storage for building and pushing images (if applicable). | ||
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| ## What can I do with Tekton? | ||
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| Tekton introduces the concept of `Tasks`, which specify the workloads you want to run: | ||
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| - [`Task`](https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/blob/master/docs/tasks.md) - defines a series of ordered `Steps`, and each `Step` invokes a specific | ||
| build tool on a specific set of inputs and produces a specific set of outputs, which can be used as inputs in the next `Step`. | ||
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| - [`Pipeline`](https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/blob/master/docs/pipelines.md) - defines a series of ordered `Tasks`, and just like `Steps` in a | ||
| `Task`, a `Task` in a `Pipeline` can use the output of a previously executed `Task` as its input. | ||
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| - [`TaskRun`](https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/blob/master/docs/taskruns.md) - instantiates a specific `Task` to execute on a particular set of | ||
| inputs and produce a particular set of outputs. In other words, the `Task` tells Tekton what to do, and a `TaskRun` tells Tekton what to do it **on**, | ||
| as well as any additional details on how to exactly do it, such as build flags. | ||
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| - [`PipelineRun`](https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/blob/master/docs/pipelineruns.md) - instantiates a specific `Pipeline` to execute on a particular | ||
| set of inputs and produce a particular set of outputs to particular destinations. | ||
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| Each `Task` executes in its own Kubernetes Pod. Thus, by default, `Tasks` within a `Pipeline` do not share data. To share data among `Tasks`, | ||
| you must explicitly configure each `Task` to make its outputs available to the next `Task` and to ingest the outputs of a previously executed | ||
| `Task` as its inputs, whichever is applicable. | ||
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| ### When to use which? | ||
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| - `Task` - useful for simpler workloads such as running a test, a lint, or building a Kaniko cache. A single `Task` executes in a single | ||
| Kubernetes Pod, uses a single disk, and generally keeps things simple. | ||
| - `Pipeline` - useful for complex workloads, such as static analysis, as well as testing, building, and deploying complex projects. | ||
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| ### I want to learn more! | ||
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| To learn more about the Tekton entities described above and start using Tekton, see the [Tekton Pipelines Overview](https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/blob/master/docs/README.md). |