tektoncd/pipeline
View on GitHubdocs: document horizontal controller scaling via leader election buckets
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#9,670 opened on Mar 26, 2026
good first issuehelp wantedkind/documentation
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Description
Description
Tekton controllers support horizontal scaling via Knative's bucket-based leader election, but this is not documented anywhere in docs/.
The mechanism is configured in config-leader-election-controller ConfigMap:
data:
buckets: "10" # partition key space into 10 buckets
Then scale the deployment:
kubectl -n tekton-pipelines scale deployment tekton-pipelines-controller --replicas=5
With M buckets and N replicas, replicas compete for buckets. Each bucket owner reconciles keys in its partition.
Areas to Document
- How to configure
bucketsinconfig-leader-election-controller - Recommended bucket/replica ratios
- Impact on reconciliation latency and throughput
- Same mechanism available for
config-leader-election-webhookandconfig-leader-election-events - Any caveats (e.g., rebalancing behavior when replicas change)
Context
Closes the long-standing request from #3404 (25 comments, opened 2020). The feature has been available for years but users don't know about it.
/kind documentation