The Tekton Pipelines CLI project, known as tkn, is a command-line interface written in Go for interacting with Tekton, an open-source framework for building Continuous Integration and Delivery systems. The CLI enables users to manage and interact with Tekton resources directly from the command line, making it an essential tool for developers and operators working with cloud-native CI/CD pipelines.
The tkn CLI provides comprehensive command groups for managing various Tekton resources. Users can work with pipelines and pipeline runs, tasks and task runs, bundles, event listeners, trigger bindings, cluster trigger bindings, custom runs, and trigger templates. The CLI also includes a hub command for searching and installing Tekton resources from the official Tekton Hub repository. Additional utilities include a completion command that generates shell completion scripts for Bash, ZSH, Fish, and PowerShell, and a version command to check the installed CLI version. Every command supports help flags for detailed documentation.
Installation of tkn is straightforward across multiple operating systems and package managers. On macOS, users can install via Homebrew or download released tarballs. Windows users have options including Chocolatey, Scoop, or direct PowerShell downloads. Linux users can choose from multiple distribution-specific methods including RPM packages for Fedora, CentOS Stream, EPEL, and RHEL systems, DEB packages for Ubuntu and Debian via PPA or direct installation, NixOS packages from nixpkgs, Arch Linux packages from the official repository, or Homebrew on Linux. The CLI can also be compiled from source for users with Go installed. Additionally, tkn can be integrated as a kubectl plugin by creating a symbolic link named kubectl-tkn, allowing it to be invoked through kubectl.
The CLI includes customization options for output formatting. By default, tkn displays colored output and emojis in interactive shell environments, but these are automatically disabled when commands are piped or run non-interactively. Users can disable colors and emojis globally by setting the NO_COLOR environment variable or on a per-command basis using the --no-color flag.
The project is classified across multiple domains including Kubernetes, CI/CD, pipeline automation, cloud-native development, containerization, DevOps tools, and container orchestration, positioning it as a central tool in the modern cloud-native development landscape.
