Tekton — Kubernetes-Native CI/CD Pipeline

Jenkins in Kubernetes works, but we feel the friction — Groovy scripts, plugin hell, state management. Tekton is Kubernetes-native: pipelines as CRDs, tasks as pods, everything declarative.

Tekton Architecture¶

Tekton defines pipeline primitives as Kubernetes CRDs: Task (atomic operation), Pipeline (sequence of tasks), PipelineRun (specific execution). Everything runs as Kubernetes pods.

Example: Build and Deploy¶

apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1beta1
kind: Pipeline
metadata:
  name: build-deploy
spec:
  tasks:
  - name: build
    taskRef:
      name: maven-build
  - name: docker
    taskRef:
      name: kaniko-build
    runAfter: [build]
  - name: deploy
    taskRef:
      name: helm-deploy
    runAfter: [docker]

Tekton vs. Jenkins¶

Tekton: Kubernetes-native, declarative, no state server, but a young ecosystem. Jenkins: huge plugin ecosystem, but legacy architecture, Groovy as DSL.

Our Verdict¶

Tekton is promising, but the ecosystem is still small. We’re experimenting with it for new projects. For existing ones — Jenkins still serves. We’re watching the development of the Tekton catalog and UI.

Kubernetes-Native CI/CD Is the Future¶

Tekton shows the direction — CI/CD as Kubernetes resources. But the maturity of the Jenkins ecosystem is hard to replace overnight.