01.01: Tekton Getting Started
Validating the Installation of kubectl
As you probably know, kubectl is a command line interface for running commands against Kubernetes clusters. Here are some commands to validate your kubectl installation:
Check kubectl version
To verify that kubectl is installed correctly, you can check the version of kubectl.
kubectl version --client
This will show you the version of your kubectl client. If kubectl is correctly installed, you will see something like this:
Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"22", GitVersion:"v1.22.0", GitCommit:"xyz", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2022-07-28T10:40:01Z", GoVersion:"go1.16.6", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
If you see a message like Command 'kubectl' not found, it means that kubectl is not installed or not correctly added to the path.
Remember, we need the command to report at least version 1.15 for the rest of the workshop.
For more details about this command, see the official documentation.
Validate the Kubernetes cluster information
You can validate your kubectl connection to the cluster by checking the cluster information:
kubectl cluster-info
If kubectl is configured correctly, you will see the Kubernetes master address and services details.
Check available nodes
You can also check if your nodes are properly configured and ready by running: Please remember to adjust these instructions as needed based on your specific Kubernetes configuration and hosting environment. kubectl get nodes
This command lists all nodes that kubectl can communicate with.
For more details about nodes you can find more information here.
Remember, in order for kubectl to find and access a Kubernetes cluster, it needs a kubeconfig file, which is created automatically when you create a cluster. By default, kubectl configuration is located at ~/.kube/config. You should always be aware of your config because it can be very easy to be working with the wrong cluster. I definitely recommend, if you haven’t already, experimenting with naming your connections using contexts and then using those contexts. You can find a good tutorial/experiment here.
Installing Tekton Pipelines
Let’s get Tekton installed in your cluster. When we say “install Tekton” we really mean install “Tekton Pipelines” then installing “Tekton Triggers”. The “trigger functionality” is generally optional but we will be using it in this workshop.
We should also point out that installing arbitrary files from the internet is usually a bad idea. We will be doing it in this workshop because the authors have validated the installations. However, in general, you should download the files in question, review them, and then use them after you have confirmed that the contents of the file are what you think they are.
Installation Steps
Step 1: Apply the Tekton Pipelines CRD
Tekton Pipelines run on the top of Kubernetes. They introduce several Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) on your cluster. To install Tekton Pipelines, use the following kubectl command:
kubectl apply --filename https://storage.googleapis.com/tekton-releases/pipeline/latest/release.yaml
This command downloads the latest Tekton Pipelines release.yaml file and applies it to your Kubernetes cluster.
For more details about this command, see the Tekton Pipelines installation guide.
Step 2: Monitor the Tekton Pipelines components until all components show a STATUS of Running:
To make sure that the Tekton Pipelines have been installed correctly, monitor the Tekton components:
kubectl get pods --namespace tekton-pipelines
If you add -w to the end, kubectl will monitor the “search” and update your result when it changes.
This command lists all the pods in the tekton-pipelines namespace. You should see the Tekton components running as pods.
For more details about kubectl get pods command, see the official Kubernetes documentation.
Step 3: Verify the installation
To verify your installation, check if the Tekton Pipelines CRDs are installed:
kubectl get crds | grep 'tekton.dev'
This command lists all the installed Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) that match ‘tekton.dev’. If Tekton Pipelines has been installed correctly, you should see several Tekton CRDs listed.
For more details about the kubectl get crds command, see the official Kubernetes documentation.
You’ve now installed Tekton Pipelines on your Kubernetes cluster!
Installing Tekton Triggers
For this workshop, we are going to be working on Tekton Triggers as well as Tasks and Pipelines so, let’s install it now.
Installation Steps
Step 1: Install the Tekton Triggers Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) and controller
kubectl apply -f https://storage.googleapis.com/tekton-releases/triggers/latest/release.yaml
This command fetches the latest Tekton Triggers release manifest and applies it to your Kubernetes cluster. It includes the necessary CRDs for Tekton Triggers and the Triggers control plane components. More information may be found on the Tekton Triggers installation page
Step 2: Install Tekton Interceptors
kubectl apply --filename https://storage.googleapis.com/tekton-releases/triggers/latest/interceptors.yaml
Another optional feature of Tekton are “Interceptors” which is what we are installing above which includes the core interceptors: CEL, Bitbucket, GitHub, and GitLab interceptors.. We will talk more about these later in the workshop. If you want to read more about them, you can find details at the official documentation.
Step 3: Verify that the installation succeeded
kubectl get pods --namespace tekton-pipelines
This command lists the pods in the tekton-pipelines namespace. You should see the Tekton Triggers pods, such as tekton-triggers-controller-* and tekton-triggers-webhook-*, in a RUNNING state after a successful installation.
Installing Tekton CLI
Last, but not least, let’s install the Tekton CLI tool. You have a number of options to get it installed based on your operating system. The full installation instructions have more details but, hopefully, one of the options below will work for you. All of these methods will dynamically give you the latest version with the exception of the deb instructions as there is no dynamic way to get it. If you want to use the deb version, you should fix the URL below to match the latest release. At the time of this writing, the latest was 0.31.2.
- Mac
brew install tektoncd-cli
- Windows
choco install tektoncd-cli --confirm
- Linux RPM & dnf/yum
sudo dnf copr enable -y chmouel/tektoncd-cli
sudo dnf install -y tektoncd-cli
- Linux Deb
curl -LO https://github.com/tektoncd/cli/releases/download/v0.31.2/tektoncd-cli-0.31.2_Linux-64bit.deb
sudo dpkg -i ./tektoncd-cli-0.31.2_Linux-64bit.deb
Verify installation
Now, check that tektoncd-cli has been installed by running tkn.
tkn
You should get help output.