Tekton Pipelines 0.12: Beta APIs and Supply Chain Foundations

Introduction

Tekton Pipelines 0.12, released on July 6, 2020, is the last stop before beta stability. Controllers adopt Kubernetes conditions consistently, custom tasks unlock automation, and supply chain projects like Chains begin to take shape.

Beta API Contracts

TaskRun and PipelineRun status fields stabilize, providing predictable condition types and timestamps.
Default timeouts and retries land, making pipelines resilient to flaky steps.
Backward-compatibility guarantees start the countdown to v1beta1.

Custom Tasks & Catalog Growth

Custom Tasks let controllers extend Tekton with bespoke primitives (e.g., Matrix builds, Slack approvals).
Tekton Catalog expands with linted, versioned tasks for security scanning, Git operations, and artifact management.
Workspaces improve secret mounting and cross-task file sharing.

Supply Chain Building Blocks

Tekton Triggers 0.6 integrates, converting GitHub or GitLab events into PipelineRuns with interceptors.
Tekton Chains signs OCI images and attestations, previewing secure artifact lineage.
EventListener debugging tools surface transformation logs and trigger payloads.

Getting Started

kubectl apply -f https://storage.googleapis.com/tekton-releases/pipeline/previous/v0.12.0/release.yaml
kubectl apply -f https://storage.googleapis.com/tekton-releases/triggers/previous/v0.6.0/release.yaml

Declarative PipelineRun example:

apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1beta1
kind: PipelineRun
metadata:
  name: build-and-scan
spec:
  pipelineRef:
    name: build-pipeline
  serviceAccountName: pipeline
  timeout: 1h

Summary

Aspect	Details
Release Date	July 6, 2020
Headline Features	Beta API stability, custom tasks, supply chain groundwork
Why it Matters	Puts Tekton on a path to GA while integrating triggers and security efforts

Tekton 0.12 lets platform teams standardize on Kubernetes-native pipelines without sacrificing extensibility or governance.