Getting Started with Pipelines

Create and run your first Tekton Pipeline

This tutorial shows you how to:

Create two Tasks.
Create a Pipeline containing your Tasks.
Use PipelineRun to instantiate and run the Pipeline containing your Tasks.

This guide uses a local cluster with minikube.

Prerequisites

Complete the Getting started with Tasks tutorial. Do not clean up your resources, skip the last section.
Install tkn, the Tekton CLI.

Create and run a second Task

You already have a “Hello World!” Task. To create a second “Goodbye!” Task:

Create a new file named goodbye-world.yaml and add the following content:

apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1beta1
kind: Task
metadata:
  name: goodbye
spec:
  params:
  - name: username
    type: string
  steps:
    - name: goodbye
      image: ubuntu
      script: |
        #!/bin/bash
        echo "Goodbye $(params.username)!"

This Task takes one parameter, username. Whenever this Task is used a value for that parameter must be passed to the Task.

Apply the Task file:

kubectl apply --filename goodbye-world.yaml

When a Task is part of a Pipeline, Tekton creates a TaskRun object for every task in the Pipeline.

Create and run a Pipeline

A Pipeline defines an ordered series of Tasks arranged in a specific execution order as part of the CI/CD workflow.

In this section you are going to create your first Pipeline, that will include both the “Hello World!” and “Goodbye!” Tasks.

Create a new file named hello-goodbye-pipeline.yaml and add the following content:

apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1beta1
kind: Pipeline
metadata:
  name: hello-goodbye
spec:
  params:
  - name: username
    type: string
  tasks:
    - name: hello
      taskRef:
        name: hello
    - name: goodbye
      runAfter:
        - hello
      taskRef:
        name: goodbye
      params:
      - name: username
        value: $(params.username)

The Pipeline defines the parameter username, which is then passed to the goodbye Task.

Apply the Pipeline configuration to your cluster:

kubectl apply --filename hello-goodbye-pipeline.yaml

A PipelineRun, represented in the API as an object of kind PipelineRun, sets the value for the parameters and executes a Pipeline. To create PipelineRun, create a new file named hello-goodbye-pipeline-run.yaml with the following:
```
apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1beta1
kind: PipelineRun
metadata:
  name: hello-goodbye-run
spec:
  pipelineRef:
    name: hello-goodbye
  params:
  - name: username
    value: "Tekton"
```
This sets the actual value for the username parameter: "Tekton".
Start the Pipeline by applying the PipelineRun configuration to your cluster:
```
kubectl apply --filename hello-goodbye-pipeline-run.yaml
```
You see the following output:
```
pipelinerun.tekton.dev/hello-goodbye-run created
```
Tekton now starts running the Pipeline.

To see the logs of the PipelineRun, use the following command:

tkn pipelinerun logs hello-goodbye-run -f -n default

The output shows both Tasks completed successfully:

[hello : hello] Hello World!

[goodbye : goodbye] Goodbye Tekton!

Cleanup

To learn about Tekton Triggers, skip this section and proceed to the next tutorial.

To delete the cluster that you created for this guide run:

minikube delete

The output confirms that the cluster was deleted:

🔥  Deleting "minikube" in docker ...
🔥  Deleting container "minikube" ...
🔥  Removing /home/user/.minikube/machines/minikube ...
💀  Removed all traces of the "minikube" cluster.

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Last modified December 27, 2022: Fix a minor typo (b9e708b)