tekton-polling-operator

README

tekton-polling-operator

A simple git repository poller.

This is a Git repository poller that detects changes in a Git repository, and triggers the execution of a Tekton PipelineRun.

When polling GitHub, it uses a special endpoint that should not consume any API tokens, and the schedule can be configured per repository.

Installation

This operator requires Tekton Pipelines to be installed first, the installation instructions are here.

$ kubectl apply -f https://storage.googleapis.com/tekton-releases/pipeline/previous/v0.14.2/release.yaml

Then you'll need to install the polling-operator.

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/bigkevmcd/tekton-polling-operator/releases/download/v0.2.0/release-v0.2.0.yaml

GitHub

This polls a GitHub repository, and triggers pipeline runs when the SHA of the a specific ref changes.

It does not impact on API rate limits to do this, instead it uses the method documented here and the ETag to fetch the commit.

GitLab

This polls a GitLab repository, and triggers pipeline runs when the SHA of the a specific ref changes.

Pipelines

You'll want a pipeline to be executed on change.

apiVersion: tekton.dev/v1beta1
kind: Pipeline
metadata:
  name: demo-pipeline
spec:
  params:
  - name: sha
    type: string
    description: "the SHA of the recently detected change"
  - name: repoURL
    type: string
    description: "the cloneURL that the change was detected in"
  tasks:
    # insert the tasks below

This pipeline accepts two parameters, the new commit SHA, and the repoURL.

sample pipeline is provided in the examples directory.

Monitoring a Repository

To monitor a repository for changes, you'll need to create a Repository object in Kubernetes.

apiVersion: polling.tekton.dev/v1alpha1
kind: Repository
metadata:
  name: example-repository
spec:
  url: https://github.com/my-org/my-repo.git
  ref: main
  frequency: 5m
  type: github # can also be gitlab
  pipelineRef:
    serviceAccountName: demo-sa # Optional ServiceAccount to execute the pipeline
    name: github-poll-pipeline
    namespace: test-ns # optional: if provided, the pipelinerun will be created in this namespace to reference the pipeline.
    params:
    - name: sha
      expression: commit.sha
    - name: repoURL
      expression: repoURL

This defines a repository that monitors the main branch in https://github.com/my-org/my-repo.git, checking every 5 minutes, and executing the github-poll-pipeline when a change is detected.

The parameters are extracted from the commit body, the expressions are CEL expressions.

The expressions can access the data from the commit as commit and the configured repository URL as repoURL.

For GitHub repositories, the commit data will have the structure here.

You can also monitor GitLab repositories, specifying the type as gitlab.

In this case, the commit data will have the structure here.

Authenticating against a Private Repository

Of course, not every repo is public, to authenticate your requests, you'll need to provide an auth token.

apiVersion: polling.tekton.dev/v1alpha1
kind: Repository
metadata:
  name: example-repository
spec:
  url: https://github.com/my-org/my-repo.git
  ref: main
  frequency: 2m
  pipelineRef:
    name: github-poll-pipeline
    params:
    - name: sha
      expression: commit.sha
    - name: repoURL
      expression: repoURL
  auth:
    secretRef:
      name:  my-github-secret
    key: token

This will fetch the secret, and get the value in token and use that to authenticate the API call to GitHub.

Creating PipelineRuns in other namespaces

See the documentation here for how to grant access for the operator to create pipelineruns in different namespaces.

Resource bindings

Yes...resources are deprecated and probably going away in their current form, but you might want to still use them...

apiVersion: polling.tekton.dev/v1alpha1
kind: Repository
metadata:
  name: demo-repository
spec:
  url: https://github.com/bigkevmcd/tekton-polling-operator.git
  ref: main
  type: github
  frequency: 30s
  pipelineRef:
    name: github-poll-pipeline-with-resource
    params:
    - name: sha
      expression: commit.sha
    - name: repoURL
      expression: repoURL
    resources:
    - name: app-git
      resourceSpec:
        type: git
        params:
        - name: revision
          value: $(params.sha)
        - name: url
          value: $(params.repoURL)

Local Development

This uses the operator-sdk, and hasn't yet been upgraded to work with newer versions than v0.19

Running tests

$ go test -v ./...

Building an image

$ operator-sdk build <docker image reference> # This requires pre-v1.0.0 of the operator-sdk

FAQ

Do you support TriggerBindings and TriggerTemplates?

Not yet, they're fairly tightly bound to TektonTriggers just now, so this will require some work to tease that apart, but the plan is to support them.

How do I insert a static string in to a CEL param?

Ahhh...this is a trick...

params:
- name: this-text
  expression: "'this-message'"

Note the use of double quotes and single quotes, the value of this is the string 'this-message'.

YAML makes this tricky, but now you know...