CI/CD beyond Jenkins
Jenkins (2004+) has been the CI/CD standard for two decades, but its master-worker model is not cloud-native: fragile Java plugins, file system state, manual scalability. Kubernetes CRD pipelines, ephemeral pod executors, declarative, reusable are needed.
The release
Tekton is born in 2018 as part of Knative Build. Separated as autonomous project in March 2019. Donated to CDF (Continuous Delivery Foundation, Linux Foundation) in March 2019 together with Jenkins, Jenkins X, Spinnaker. Apache 2.0 licence. Written in Go.
Architecture
Tekton defines K8s CRDs:
- Task — unit of work composed of
steps(container image + command) - TaskRun — Task instance execution
- Pipeline — graph of Tasks with dependencies
- PipelineRun — Pipeline execution
- Workspace — volume shared between steps
- Trigger — webhook/event → PipelineRun
- EventListener — HTTP endpoint for events
apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1
kind: Task
metadata: { name: build-image }
spec:
steps:
- name: build
image: gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor
command: [/kaniko/executor]
args: [--destination=$(params.image)]Components
- Tekton Pipelines — core
- Tekton Triggers — webhook → pipeline
- Tekton Dashboard — UI
- Tekton CLI (tkn) — CLI
- Tekton Chains — SLSA/Sigstore supply chain attestations
- Tekton Results — execution history storage
- Tekton Hub — community Task/Pipeline catalogue
- Tekton Operator — component installation
Tekton Catalog
Standard reusable Tasks:
- git-clone — source checkout
- kaniko, buildah, docker — container build
- helm-upgrade, kubectl — K8s deploy
- trivy — security scan
- sonarqube — quality analysis
Enterprise distributions
- Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines — Tekton on OpenShift, enterprise support
- Jenkins X — GitOps + Tekton
- IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery
- Google Cloud Build — some derived components
Competitors
- GitHub Actions — SaaS-first, now also self-hosted runners
- GitLab CI/CD — integrated in the product
- ArgoWorkflows — similar, more generic orchestration
- Jenkins Pipelines — legacy
- CircleCI, Travis CI, Drone CI — SaaS
In the Italian context
Tekton is used in:
- Italian OpenShift environments (banks, PA, enterprise companies)
- Platform teams wanting cloud-native CI/CD without SaaS
- Multi-tenant CI — K8s clusters serving many teams
- Supply chain governance — Tekton Chains for SLSA attestations
Less popular than GitHub Actions in SaaS, but dominant in Italian Red Hat/IBM ecosystems.
References: Tekton (March 2019, CDF). Origin Knative Build (Google). Apache 2.0 licence. Written in Go. CRDs: Task, Pipeline, Workspace, Trigger. Distributions: OpenShift Pipelines, Jenkins X, IBM Cloud.