Tekton

Tekton is an open-source, Kubernetes-native framework for building CI/CD systems, defining Tasks and Pipelines as Kubernetes custom resources that run each step in a container.

KubernetesCI/CDGoContainerCloud NativeOpen Source

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Stars: 9,077
Forks: 1,966
Contributors: 454
Latest: 1.17.0

About Tekton

Tekton Pipelines grew out of Knative Build and is a graduated-style project of the Continuous Delivery Foundation. Steps, Tasks and Pipelines are Kubernetes Custom Resources, so pipelines are declared in YAML, scheduled by Kubernetes and scale with the cluster. Tekton is intentionally a set of building blocks: Tekton Triggers starts pipelines from events, Tekton Chains adds supply-chain security (signing and provenance), the Dashboard provides a UI, and products such as Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines are built on top of it.

Key Features

Tasks and Pipelines as Kubernetes Custom Resources

Each step runs in its own container

Reusable Tasks shared via Tekton Hub / Artifact Hub and bundles

Event-driven execution with Tekton Triggers

Supply-chain security with Tekton Chains (signing, SLSA provenance)

Workspaces and results for passing data between tasks

Tekton Dashboard and tkn CLI

Pros

Truly Kubernetes-native: scales and integrates like any other workload

Vendor-neutral building blocks used by several commercial CI/CD products

Strong supply-chain security story

Highly composable and reusable tasks

Cons

Verbose YAML and a steep learning curve

Requires a Kubernetes cluster to run anything

Low-level: you assemble your own CI/CD system from components

Basic UI compared to all-in-one CI products

Tool Information

Language: Go (YAML CRDs)
License: Apache-2.0
First release: 2018 (from Knative Build)
Latest version: 1.17.0
Maintainer: Continuous Delivery Foundation / community

Used By

Red Hat OpenShift PipelinesIBM Cloud Continuous Delivery

Compare Tekton with other tools

See how Tekton stacks up against other workflow orchestration engines, feature by feature.