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Self-Hosting Drone CI: Container-Native Pipelines

Drone CI is a container-native continuous integration platform. Every step runs in isolation with simple YAML configuration.

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What Is Drone?


Drone is a container-native CI/CD platform. Every pipeline step runs in its own Docker container, providing complete isolation.


Drone vs Woodpecker


Woodpecker is actually a fork of Drone. They're similar:

  • Drone: Original project, enterprise version available
  • Woodpecker: Community fork, fully open source

    • For self-hosting, Woodpecker is recommended (community-governed). But existing Drone users may prefer staying with Drone.


    Features


  • Container-native execution
  • YAML pipeline configuration
  • Multi-platform (Linux, ARM, Windows)
  • Plugin ecosystem
  • Secrets management
  • Matrix builds
  • Cron scheduling

    • Example Pipeline


    kind: pipeline

    type: docker

    name: default


    steps:

  • name: test

    • image: node:20

    commands:

  • npm ci
  • npm test
  • name: build

    • image: node:20

    commands:

  • npm run build

    • Deployment


    Deploy on TinyPod. Resources: 1 CPU, 512 MB RAM for the server, plus resources for build agents.