Tekton Pipelines CLI (tkn)

The Tekton Pipelines CLI project provides a command-line interface (CLI) for interacting with Tekton, an open-source framework for Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD) systems.

Installing tkn

Download the latest binary executable for your operating system.

Mac OS X

• Use Homebrew

  brew install tektoncd-cli

• Use released tarball

  # Get the tar.xz
  curl -LO https://github.com/tektoncd/cli/releases/download/v0.37.0/tkn_0.37.0_Darwin_all.tar.gz
  # Extract tkn to your PATH (e.g. /usr/local/bin)
  sudo tar xvzf tkn_0.37.0_Darwin_all.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin tkn

Windows

• Use Chocolatey

choco install tektoncd-cli --confirm

• Use Scoop

scoop install tektoncd-cli

• Use Powershell released zip

#Create directory
New-Item -Path "$HOME/tektoncd/cli" -Type Directory
# Download file
Start-BitsTransfer -Source https://github.com/tektoncd/cli/releases/download/v0.37.0/tkn_0.37.0_Windows_x86_64.zip -Destination "$HOME/tektoncd/cli/."
# Uncompress zip file
Expand-Archive $HOME/tektoncd/cli/*.zip -DestinationPath C:\Users\Developer\tektoncd\cli\.
#Add to Windows `Environment Variables`
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path",$($env:Path + ";$Home\tektoncd\cli"),'User')

Linux tarballs

• Linux AMD 64

  # Get the tar.xz
  curl -LO https://github.com/tektoncd/cli/releases/download/v0.37.0/tkn_0.37.0_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz
  # Extract tkn to your PATH (e.g. /usr/local/bin)
  sudo tar xvzf tkn_0.37.0_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin/ tkn

• Linux AARCH 64

  # Get the tar.xz
  curl -LO https://github.com/tektoncd/cli/releases/download/v0.37.0/tkn_0.37.0_Linux_aarch64.tar.gz
  # Extract tkn to your PATH (e.g. /usr/local/bin)
  sudo tar xvzf tkn_0.37.0_Linux_aarch64.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin/ tkn

• Linux IBM Z

  # Get the tar.gz
  curl -LO https://github.com/tektoncd/cli/releases/download/v0.37.0/tkn_0.37.0_Linux_s390x.tar.gz
  # Extract tkn to your PATH (e.g. /usr/local/bin)
  sudo tar xvzf tkn_0.37.0_Linux_s390x.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin/ tkn

• Linux IBM P

  # Get the tar.gz
  curl -LO https://github.com/tektoncd/cli/releases/download/v0.37.0/tkn_0.37.0_Linux_ppc64le.tar.gz
  # Extract tkn to your PATH (e.g. /usr/local/bin)
  sudo tar xvzf tkn_0.37.0_Linux_ppc64le.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin/ tkn

Linux RPMs

If you are running on any of the following rpm based distros:

• Latest Fedora and the two versions behind.
• Centos Stream
• EPEL
• Latest RHEL

you would be able to use @chmouel's unofficial copr package repository by running the following commands:

dnf copr enable chmouel/tektoncd-cli
dnf install tektoncd-cli

• Binary RPM package

On any other RPM based distros, you can install the rpm directly:

 rpm -Uvh https://github.com/tektoncd/cli/releases/download/v0.37.0/tektoncd-cli-0.37.0_Linux-64bit.rpm

Linux Debs

• Ubuntu PPA

If you are running on the latest rolling Ubuntu or Debian, you can use the TektonCD CLI PPA:

sudo apt update;sudo apt install -y gnupg
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 3EFE0E0A2F2F60AA
echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/tektoncd/cli/ubuntu jammy main"|sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tektoncd-ubuntu-cli.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y tektoncd-cli

The PPA may work with older releases, but that hasn't been tested.

• Binary DEB package

On any other Debian or Ubuntu based distro, you can simply install the binary package directly with dpkg:

curl -LO https://github.com/tektoncd/cli/releases/download/v0.37.0/tektoncd-cli-0.37.0_Linux-64bit.deb
dpkg -i tektoncd-cli-0.37.0_Linux-64bit.deb

NixOS/Nix

You can install tektoncd-cli from nixpkgs on any system that supports the nix package manager.

nix-env --install tektoncd-cli

Arch / Manjaro

You can install tekton-cli from the official arch package repository :

pacman -S tekton-cli

Homebrew on Linux

You can install the latest tektoncd-cli if you are using Homebrew on Linux as for the osx version you need to simply do :

brew install tektoncd-cli

Source install

If you have go installed and you want to compile the CLI from source, you can checkout the Git repository and run the following commands:

make bin/tkn

This will output the tkn binary in bin/tkn

tkn as a kubectl plugin

kubectl will find any binary named kubectl-* on your PATH and consider it as a plugin. After installing tkn, create a link as kubectl-tkn

ln -s /usr/local/bin/tkn /usr/local/bin/kubectl-tkn

Run the following to confirm tkn is available as a plugin:

kubectl plugin list

You should see the following after running kubectl plugin list if tkn is available as a plugin:

/usr/local/bin/kubectl-tkn

If the output above is shown, run kubectl-tkn to see the list of available tkn commands to run.

Useful Commands

The following commands help you understand and effectively use the Tekton CLI:

• tkn help: Displays a list of the commands with helpful information.
• tkn bundle: Manage Tekton bundles
• tkn clustertask: Parent command of the ClusterTask command group.
• tkn clustertriggerbinding: Parent command of the ClusterTriggerBinding command group.
• tkn completion: Outputs a BASH, ZSH, Fish or PowerShell completion script for tkn to allow command completion with Tab.
• tkn customrun: Parent command of the Customrun command group.
• tkn eventlistener: Parent command of the Eventlistener command group.
• tkn hub: Search and install Tekton Resources from Hub
• tkn pipeline: Parent command of the Pipeline command group.
• tkn pipelinerun: Parent command of the Pipelinerun command group.
• tkn task: Parent command of the Task command group.
• tkn taskrun: Parent command of the Taskrun command group.
• tkn triggerbinding: Parent command of the Triggerbinding command group.
• tkn triggertemplate: Parent command of the Triggertemplate command group.
• tkn version: Outputs the cli version.

For every tkn command, you can use -h or --help flags to display specific help for that command.

Disable Color and Emojis in Output

For many tkn commands, color and emojis by default will appear in command output.

It will only shows if you are in interactive shell with a standard input attached. If you pipe the tkn command or run it in a non interactive way (ie: from tekton itself in a Task) the coloring and emojis will always be disabled.

tkn offers two approaches for disabling color and emojis from command output.

To remove the color and emojis from all tkn command output, set the environment variable NO_COLOR, such as shown below:

export NO_COLOR=""

More information on NO_COLOR can be found in the NO_COLOR documentation.

To remove color and emojis from the output of a single command execution, the --no-color option can be used with any command, such as in the example below:

tkn taskrun describe --no-color

Want to contribute

We are so excited to have you!

• See CONTRIBUTING.md for an overview of our processes
• See DEVELOPMENT.md for how to get started
• See ROADMAP.md for the current roadmap
• See [releases.md][releases.md] for our release cadence and processes
• Look at our good first issues and our help wanted issues