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Welcome to the Pipelines as Code contributor community! Whether you’re fixing bugs, adding features, improving documentation, or helping other users, your contributions make PAC better.

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What is Pipelines as Code?

Pipelines as Code (PAC) is an opinionated CI/CD solution for Tekton and OpenShift Pipelines that allows you to define and manage your pipelines directly from your source code repository. It integrates with multiple Git providers:
  • GitHub (via GitHub App & Webhook)
  • GitLab (Webhook)
  • Forgejo (Webhook - Tech Preview)
  • Bitbucket Cloud & Data Center (Webhook)

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Project Architecture

PAC consists of three main components:
  • Controller: Processes Git webhook events, validates permissions, and creates PipelineRuns
  • Watcher: Monitors PipelineRun status and reports back to Git providers
  • Webhook: Receives webhook events from Git providers (runs as part of the controller)
See Architecture for detailed information.

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Ways to Contribute

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Code Contributions

  • Bug fixes: Fix issues reported in GitHub
  • New features: Add support for new providers, annotations, or workflows
  • Performance improvements: Optimize controller logic, reduce memory usage
  • Refactoring: Improve code quality and maintainability

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Documentation

  • User guides: Help users understand features
  • API documentation: Document CRDs and configuration options
  • Examples: Share real-world pipeline configurations
  • Blog posts: Write about your PAC experience

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Testing

  • Write tests: Improve test coverage for edge cases
  • Report bugs: File detailed bug reports with reproduction steps
  • E2E testing: Help test against different Git providers

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Community Support

  • Answer questions: Help users on Slack or GitHub Discussions
  • Review PRs: Provide feedback on pull requests
  • Mentor contributors: Help onboard new contributors

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Code of Conduct

Before contributing, please read our Code of Conduct. We are committed to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all contributors.

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Getting Started

1

Read the documentation

Familiarize yourself with PAC by reading the user documentation.
2

Set up your development environment

Follow the Development Setup guide to configure your local environment.
3

Find an issue to work on

Browse good first issues or help wanted issues.
4

Submit your contribution

Create a pull request following our contribution workflow.

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Contribution Workflow

  1. Fork the repository and clone it locally
  2. Create a feature branch from main: 
    git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature
  3. Make your changes and add tests
  4. Run quality checks: 
    make test lint
  5. Commit your changes following conventional commits
  6. Push to your fork: 
    git push origin feature/amazing-feature
  7. Open a pull request with a clear description

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Development Tools

We use several tools to maintain code quality:
  • golangci-lint: Go code linting
  • yamllint: YAML file validation
  • markdownlint: Markdown documentation linting
  • ruff: Python code formatting and linting
  • shellcheck: Shell script validation
  • vale: Grammar and style checking for docs
  • codespell: Spell checking
  • pre-commit: Git hooks to catch issues before pushing
See Development Setup for installation instructions.

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Testing Requirements

All code contributions must include appropriate tests. We use gotest.tools/v3 for unit tests (never testify).

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Test Types

  • Unit tests: Test individual functions and packages 
    make test
  • E2E tests: Test full workflows against real Git providers 
    make test-e2e
  • Coverage reports: Generate HTML coverage reports 
    make html-coverage
See Testing Guide for detailed information.

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AI Assistance Disclosure

When submitting pull requests, you must disclose any AI/LLM assistance used during development. This promotes transparency and proper attribution.
If you used AI assistance:
  1. Check the appropriate boxes in the PR template’s ”🤖 AI Assistance” section
  2. Specify which LLM was used (GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, etc.)
  3. Indicate the extent of assistance (code generation, documentation, etc.)
  4. Add Co-authored-by trailers to commit messages when AI significantly contributed:
./hack/add-llm-coauthor.sh
Example commit trailer: 
Co-authored-by: Copilot <[email protected]>

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Target Architecture

PAC targets both arm64 and amd64 architectures. When contributing:
  • Ensure Docker images support both architectures
  • Test on arm64 when possible (dogfooding runs on arm64)
  • Use multi-arch base images in Dockerfiles

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Communication Channels

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Getting Help

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Staying Updated

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Next Steps

Development Setup

Set up your local development environment

Architecture

Understand the PAC architecture and components

Testing Guide

Learn how to write and run tests

Release Process

Understand how releases are created

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

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