Tekton Pipelines 0.18: CI/CD Pipeline Maturity

Introduction

Tekton Pipelines 0.18 — CI/CD Pipeline Maturity — was released on August 10, 2021.

This is a practical update aimed at making day‑to‑day Kubernetes work a bit more predictable.

In this release: Tekton Pipelines 0.18 advances CI/CD capabilities with improved pipeline execution, enhanced resource management, and better observability for Kubernetes-native builds.

Pipeline Execution Improvements

• Task execution optimizations reduce overhead and improve throughput for concurrent pipeline runs.
• Resource management enhancements provide better control over CPU and memory allocation for pipeline tasks.
• Timeout handling improvements ensure pipelines fail gracefully with clear error messages.
• Retry logic enables automatic retry of failed tasks with configurable backoff strategies.

Resource & Workspace Enhancements

1. Workspace improvements simplify file sharing between tasks with better volume management.
2. Resource binding enhancements provide more flexible ways to pass resources between pipeline stages.
3. Secret management improvements enable secure credential handling with Kubernetes secrets integration.
4. Artifact storage optimizations reduce storage overhead for large build artifacts.

Observability & Debugging

• PipelineRun status improvements provide detailed information about execution progress and failures.
• Log aggregation enhancements enable centralized logging for all pipeline tasks.
• Metrics expansion exposes detailed pipeline execution metrics for Prometheus integration.
• Event tracking provides real-time notifications for pipeline state changes.

API Stability & Compatibility

• v1beta1 API refinements improve stability and backward compatibility for production deployments.
• CRD validation enhancements prevent misconfigurations with better error messages.
• Migration tools simplify upgrades from earlier Tekton versions.
• Documentation expansion includes comprehensive guides for common pipeline patterns.

Integration & Ecosystem

• Tekton Triggers integration improvements enable better event-driven pipeline execution.
• Tekton Chains support enables supply chain security with artifact signing and attestation.
• Tekton Catalog expansion provides more pre-built tasks for common CI/CD scenarios.
• Cloud provider integrations improve support for AWS, GCP, and Azure services.

Getting Started

kubectl apply -f https://storage.googleapis.com/tekton-releases/pipeline/previous/v0.18.0/release.yaml

Define a Pipeline:

apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1beta1
kind: Pipeline
metadata:
  name: build-and-test
spec:
  tasks:
  - name: build
    taskRef:
      name: build-task
    workspaces:
    - name: source
      workspace: shared-workspace
  - name: test
    taskRef:
      name: test-task
    runAfter:
    - build
    workspaces:
    - name: source
      workspace: shared-workspace
  workspaces:
  - name: shared-workspace

Summary

Tekton 0.18 demonstrates continued maturity in the Kubernetes CI/CD space, providing teams with powerful tools for building cloud-native pipelines.