Creating a Pipeline Using Pipeline as Code

In modern software development practices, pipelines play a crucial role in automating and streamlining the process of building, testing, and deploying applications. This tutorial will guide you through creating a pipeline using pipeline-as-code concepts. We'll focus on GitHub as the provider and assume that you have a SAAP set up with pipeline-as-code capabilities.

Now that we have completed all the prerequisites to run this pipelineRun, we can continue by adding a pipeline to our application using pipeline-as-code approach.

Objectives

Create a Tekton PipelineRun using a .tekton/main.yaml file from a code repository.
Define parameters, workspaces, and tasks within the PipelineRun for building and deploying your application.

Key Results

Successfully create and execute the Tekton PipelineRun using the defined .tekton/main.yaml file, enabling automated CI/CD processes for your application.

Tutorial

Create PipelineRun Resource

Let's walk you through creating a Tekton PipelineRun using a Pipeline-as-Code approach. Create a .tekton folder and place it in the pipelineRun for your source code repository as main.yaml. This enables you to define and manage your pipelines along with your application code, promoting better code-pipeline integration and version control.

Since the .tekton folder containing your pipelineRun definition is part of your source code repository, you want to avoid including sensitive authentication information directly in the repository. Storing them as a secret allows you to version control your pipeline definition without exposing sensitive data.

Let's create SSH keys to access the repository.

For SSH Access
- Generate SSH Key Pair
- Add Deploy Key to your Repository
Note

A deploy key is specific to a single repository and cannot be used for multiple repositories.*

After adding the "public key" to the Deploy keys section of your repository, now is the time to add the "private key" in the secret.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: nordmart-ssh-creds
  namespace: argocd
  labels:
    argocd.argoproj.io/secret-type: repository
stringData:
  type: git
  url: git@github.com:argoproj/my-private-repository # Copy the SSH URL of your repo and paste it here
  sshPrivateKey: | # Paste base64 encoded private key here
    -----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----
    ...
    -----END OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----

Note

We will be using this secret in our pipelineRun

Let's place this PipelineRun in .tekton/main.yaml for your source code repository.

apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1beta1
kind: PipelineRun
metadata:
  name: main # pipelineRun name
  annotations:
    pipelinesascode.tekton.dev/on-event: "[push]" # Trigger the pipelineRun on push events on branch main
    pipelinesascode.tekton.dev/on-target-branch: "main"
    pipelinesascode.tekton.dev/task: "[https://raw.usercontent.com/stakater/tekton-catalog/main/stakater-create-git-tag/rendered/stakater-create-git-tag-0.0.7.yaml, git-clone]"
    # pipelineRun Tasks are fetching from our tekton-catalog repo where all the tasks are rendered
    pipelinesascode.tekton.dev/max-keep-runs: "2" # Only remain 2 latest pipelineRuns on SAAP
spec:
  params:
    - name: repo_url
      value: "git@github.com:<YOUR-ORG>/<YOUR-REPO-NAME/" # Place your repo SSH URL
    - name: gitrevision
      value: {{revision}} # Dynamic variable to fetch branch name of the push event on your repo
    - name: repo_path
      value: {{repo_name}} # Dynamic varaible to fetch repo name
    - name: image_registry_url
      value: "<docker-registry-url>" # Place image registry URL without https://
    - name: helm_registry
      value: "<https://helm-registry-url>" # Place helm registry URL with https://
  pipelineSpec: # Define what parameters will be used for pipeline
    params:
      - name: repo_url
      - name: gitrevision
      - name: repo_path
      - name: image_registry_url
      - name: helm_registry
    workspaces: # Mention what workspaces will be used by this pipeline to store data and used by data transferring between tasks
      - name: source
      - name: ssh-directory
    tasks: # Mention what tasks will be used by this pipeline
      - name: fetch-repository #Name what you want to call the task
        taskRef:
          name: git-clone # Name of tasks mentioned in tekton-catalog
          kind: Task
        workspaces: # Mention what workspaces will be used by this task
          - name: output
            workspace: source
          - name: ssh-directory
            workspace: ssh-directory
        params: # Parameters will be used by this task
          - name: depth
            value: "0"
          - name: url
            value: $(params.repo_url)
          - name: revision
            value: $(params.gitrevision)
      - name: create-git-tag # Name what you want to call the task
        runAfter: # Created dependency so the below task will only run if fetch-repository will be suceeded
          - fetch-repository
        taskRef:
          name: stakater-create-git-tag-0.0.7 # Name of tasks mentioned in tekton-catalog
          kind: Task
        params: # Parameters will be used by this task
          - name: PR_NUMBER
            value: "NA"
          - name: GIT_REVISION
            value: $(params.gitrevision)
        workspaces: # Mention what workspaces will be used by this task
          - name: source
            workspace: source
          - name: ssh-directory
            workspace: ssh-directory
  workspaces: # Mention Workspaces configuration
    - name: source
      volumeClaimTemplate:
        spec:
          accessModes:
            - ReadWriteOnce
          resources:
            requests:
              storage: 1Gi
    - name: ssh-directory # Using ssh-directory workspace for our task to have better security
      secret:
        secretName: nordmart-ssh-creds # Created this secret earlier
    - name: basic-auth
      secret:
        secretName: git-auth