Introduction to Pipelines

Pipelines are an organized group of stages and steps for automating any number of tasks within a hub based on a trigger.

Generally, pipelines are used for automating container deployments, but can be utilized for orchestrating complex sequences that affect entire clusters. This type of automation is generally known as GitOps.

Anatomy of a Pipeline

Pipelines are divided into stages, containing a series of steps.

Pipeline Runs

Each invocation of a pipeline is referred to as a run. The run data encapsulates all pipeline variables and data about the pass/fail for each stage and step.

Pipeline runs also capture the time of the run.

Stages

Stages are intended to be a logical grouping of steps to achieve a goal.

Steps

Steps are the specific tasks that the pipeline will execute when run. Steps within a stage are run in series.

For a complete list of all available steps and their details, see here.

Trigger Keys

Trigger keys are used to begin a run of a pipeline. Trigger keys are simply an HTTP endpoint and a secret that can be called from anywhere that has internet access. This provides ultimate flexibility, while the pipeline can be tailored specifically to dealing with the Cycle-side of a deployment.

curl https://api.cycle.io/v1/pipelines/<pipeline ID>/trigger \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{ "secret": "$TRIGGER_KEY_SECRET" }' \
    -X POST

Example Workflow

If using Github Actions, the action can focus on testing the newly submitted code, building and pushing a docker image to a registry, then calling the trigger key via cURL to start the deployment on Cycle. From there, the pipeline will automate importing the image, and deploying or reimaging a container.

ACLs

Pipelines have full support for role based ACLs.

Get Started with Pipelines

• Portal
• API