Tekton Basics

Build cloud-native CI/CD pipelines using Tekton, the Kubernetes-native pipeline engine.

Time: ~15 minutes Difficulty: Intermediate

What You Will Learn

• Tasks: the building blocks (a sequence of steps running in a pod)
• Pipelines: chaining Tasks together with dependencies
• TaskRun and PipelineRun: executing Tasks and Pipelines
• Parameters: passing values into Tasks
• Workspaces: sharing files between Tasks
• Results: passing data from one Task to the next
• The Tekton Dashboard for visualizing runs

Why Tekton

Tekton runs pipelines as Kubernetes resources. Each Task is a pod, each step is a container. This means:

• Pipelines are declarative YAML, stored in Git, versioned like any other K8s resource
• Each step runs in its own container (any image, any language)
• Workspaces use PVCs, so data persists across steps and tasks
• No external CI server needed (Jenkins, GitLab CI). The cluster IS the CI system.

Install Tekton

Navigate to the demo directory:

cd demos/tekton-basics

kubectl apply -f manifests/namespace.yaml

# Install Tekton Pipelines
kubectl apply --filename https://storage.googleapis.com/tekton-releases/pipeline/latest/release.yaml

# Wait for Tekton to be ready
kubectl get pods -n tekton-pipelines -w

Install the Tekton Dashboard (optional but recommended)

kubectl apply --filename https://storage.googleapis.com/tekton-releases/dashboard/latest/release.yaml

# Access the dashboard
kubectl port-forward svc/tekton-dashboard -n tekton-pipelines 9097:9097

Open http://localhost:9097.

Run a Simple Task

Create the Task

kubectl apply -f manifests/task-hello.yaml

Run it

kubectl create -f manifests/taskrun-hello.yaml

Note: kubectl create (not apply) because the TaskRun uses generateName for unique names.

Check the result

# List TaskRuns
kubectl get taskruns -n tekton-demo

# Get logs from the latest run
kubectl get taskruns -n tekton-demo -o name | tail -1 | \
  xargs kubectl logs -n tekton-demo --all-containers

You should see: Hello, Tekton!

Run a Pipeline

A Pipeline chains multiple Tasks. This one clones a Git repo, lints the YAML files, and reports the results.

Create the Tasks and Pipeline

kubectl apply -f manifests/task-git-info.yaml
kubectl apply -f manifests/task-lint.yaml
kubectl apply -f manifests/pipeline.yaml

Run the Pipeline

kubectl create -f manifests/pipelinerun.yaml

Watch it execute

# Watch pods spin up for each task
kubectl get pods -n tekton-demo -w

# Check the PipelineRun status
kubectl get pipelineruns -n tekton-demo

# Get logs from all tasks
kubectl get pipelineruns -n tekton-demo -o name | tail -1 | \
  xargs kubectl logs -n tekton-demo --all-containers --prefix

Or open the Tekton Dashboard at http://localhost:9097 to see the pipeline graph.

What is Happening

manifests/
  namespace.yaml          # tekton-demo namespace
  task-hello.yaml         # Simple greeting task (params)
  task-git-info.yaml      # Clone repo, extract commit SHA (workspaces, results)
  task-lint.yaml          # Lint YAML files (workspaces)
  pipeline.yaml           # Chain: git-info -> lint -> hello (runAfter, result refs)
  taskrun-hello.yaml      # Runs the hello task
  pipelinerun.yaml        # Runs the repo-check pipeline

Tekton resource hierarchy:

Pipeline (defines the workflow)
    |
    v  instantiated by
PipelineRun (a single execution)
    |
    v  creates
TaskRun (one per Task in the Pipeline)
    |
    v  creates
Pod (one per TaskRun, one container per Step)

Key concepts in this demo:

Concept	What It Does	Example
params	Pass values into Tasks	name: "Tekton"
workspaces	Share files between Tasks	PVC mounted in git-info and lint
results	Pass small data between Tasks	Commit SHA from git-info to hello
runAfter	Control execution order	lint runs after fetch-repo

Experiment

1. Run the hello task with a different name:

   kubectl create -n tekton-demo -f - <<'EOF'
   apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1
   kind: TaskRun
   metadata:
     generateName: hello-custom-
   spec:
     taskRef:
       name: hello
     params:
       - name: name
         value: "Kubernetes"
   EOF

2. List all TaskRuns and PipelineRuns:

   kubectl get taskruns,pipelineruns -n tekton-demo

3. Check the results from the git-info task:

   kubectl get taskruns -n tekton-demo -l tekton.dev/pipeline=repo-check \
     -o jsonpath='{.items[0].status.results}' | python3 -m json.tool

Cleanup

kubectl delete namespace tekton-demo
# Tekton system components remain installed for demo 31

Further Reading

See docs/deep-dive.md for a detailed explanation of Tekton architecture, step containers, sidecar containers, timeout handling, retry policies, custom tasks, and Tekton Hub.

Next Step

Move on to Tekton CI/CD to build a real-world clone-test-build-deploy pipeline with triggers.