Tekton

What is Tekton?

Tekton is a powerful, cloud-native, open-source framework for creating CI/CD systems. As a Kubernetes-native solution, Tekton enables you to build, test, and deploy across cloud providers and on-premises systems by abstracting away the underlying details. Born as an open-source project under the umbrella of the Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF), Tekton has evolved into one of the most robust and flexible CI/CD platforms available in 2025.

Tekton leverages Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) to define CI/CD pipeline components as code, providing a declarative approach to DevOps automation. It brings enterprise-grade features like security, compliance, observability, and multi-cloud portability to your CI/CD workflows, making it the preferred choice for organizations adopting cloud-native methodologies.

Why Choose Tekton in 2025?

  • Cloud-Native Architecture: Built from the ground up for Kubernetes environments

  • Vendor Neutral: Works across all major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) and on-premises

  • Supply Chain Security: Built-in support for SLSA compliance and software supply chain security

  • GitOps Ready: Seamless integration with GitOps workflows and ArgoCD

  • Enterprise Grade: Battle-tested in production by organizations like Google, IBM, Red Hat, and VMware

Key Features and Concepts (2025)

Core Components

1. Tasks The fundamental building blocks of a Tekton pipeline are tasks. Each task represents a specific unit of work, such as building code, running tests, or deploying an application. Tasks can be combined and reused across pipelines, promoting modularity and code sharing.

2. Pipelines Pipelines provide a way to orchestrate tasks in a specific order to create an end-to-end CI/CD workflow. With Tekton, you can define complex pipelines that include multiple stages, parallel execution, and conditional branching.

3. PipelineRuns and TaskRuns These are the runtime instances of Pipelines and Tasks. They represent the actual execution of your defined workflows with specific parameters and workspaces.

4. Workspaces Workspaces allow you to share files between tasks within a pipeline. They provide a mechanism for passing data and artifacts between different stages of the CI/CD workflow. Workspaces ensure isolation and reproducibility, making it easier to manage complex pipelines.

5. Parameters and Results Parameters enable dynamic configuration of tasks and pipelines at runtime, while Results allow tasks to output data that can be consumed by subsequent tasks.

New 2025 Features

Supply Chain Security (SLSA Compliance)

  • Built-in support for generating SLSA provenance

  • Signed task and pipeline execution attestations

  • Integration with Sigstore for keyless signing

Enhanced Security Model

  • Pod Security Standards enforcement

  • Service mesh integration (Istio, Linkerd)

  • RBAC templates for common use cases

Performance Improvements

  • Faster pipeline startup times (50% improvement over 2024)

  • Optimized resource scheduling

  • Better memory management for large pipelines

GitOps Integration

  • Native ArgoCD integration

  • Automated pipeline synchronization

  • Git-based pipeline definitions with auto-discovery

Tekton Architecture 2025

A task can consist of multiple steps, and pipeline may consist of multiple tasks. The tasks may run in parallel or in sequence

Real-World Examples (2025)

Example 1: AWS EKS CI/CD Pipeline with SLSA Compliance

This example demonstrates a complete CI/CD pipeline for deploying to AWS EKS with supply chain security features.

Example 2: Azure AKS Multi-Environment Pipeline

This pipeline demonstrates deploying to multiple Azure environments with approval gates.

Example 3: GCP Cloud Run Serverless Pipeline

This example shows a serverless deployment pipeline for Google Cloud Run with automated scaling.

Example 4: Multi-Cloud GitOps Pipeline

This advanced example demonstrates a GitOps pipeline that can deploy to multiple cloud providers.

Pipeline Triggers and EventListeners (2025)

Modern webhook configuration for GitLab, GitHub, and Azure DevOps:

These examples showcase:

  1. SLSA Compliance: Supply chain security with image signing and provenance generation

  2. Multi-Environment Deployments: Proper staging with approval gates

  3. Serverless Deployments: Cloud Run with auto-scaling configuration

  4. GitOps Integration: Configuration management with automated updates

  5. Modern Webhooks: Advanced event filtering and processing

  6. Security Scanning: Container vulnerability assessments

  7. Multi-Cloud Support: Unified pipelines across cloud providers

Installation Guide (2025)

Prerequisites

  • Kubernetes cluster 1.28+ (recommended: 1.29 or later)

  • kubectl configured to access your cluster

  • Cluster-admin permissions

  • At least 2GB of available memory and 2 CPU cores

Installing Tekton Pipelines (v0.55.0+)

To install Tekton Pipelines on a Kubernetes cluster:

  1. Install the latest stable release:

  1. For specific versions or alternative installations:

  1. Monitor the installation:

When all components show 1/1 under the READY column, the installation is complete.

Installing Tekton Triggers (v0.26.0+)

  1. Install Tekton Triggers for webhook and event-driven pipelines:

Installing Tekton Dashboard (v0.40.0+)

  1. Install the web-based dashboard:

Installing Tekton CLI (tkn) v0.35.0+

Installation on Different Operating Systems

Linux Installation

WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) Installation

NixOS Installation

Best Practices for Tekton in 2025

  1. Security First

    • Always use signed images and SLSA provenance

    • Implement proper RBAC and security contexts

    • Regularly scan for vulnerabilities

  2. Resource Management

    • Use resource quotas and limits

    • Implement proper workspace management

    • Monitor pipeline performance

  3. GitOps Integration

    • Store pipeline definitions in Git

    • Use automated synchronization

    • Implement proper branching strategies

  4. Observability

    • Enable comprehensive logging

    • Use distributed tracing

    • Implement monitoring and alerting

Getting Started with Your First Pipeline


DevOps Joke: Why did the developer choose Tekton over other CI/CD tools? Because they wanted their pipelines to be as declarative as their love for Kubernetes - and just like their relationship status, everything had to be defined in YAML! ๐Ÿ˜„

At least with Tekton, when your pipeline fails, you can blame it on the cluster and not your code... most of the time!

Last updated