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Self-Hosting Woodpecker CI: Lightweight CI/CD

Woodpecker CI is a container-native CI/CD engine. Fork of Drone CI with community governance and simple YAML pipelines.

woodpeckerci-cddevopscontainers

What Is Woodpecker?


Woodpecker CI is a container-native CI/CD system. Every step runs in an isolated container. Simple YAML configuration.


Woodpecker vs Gitea Actions vs Jenkins


  • Woodpecker: Container-native, lightweight, multi-forge (Gitea, GitHub, GitLab)
  • Gitea Actions: GitHub Actions compatible, Gitea-only
  • Jenkins: Enterprise, complex, plugin-heavy

    • Woodpecker for simplicity. Gitea Actions for GitHub Actions compatibility. Jenkins when enterprise requires it.


    Features


  • Container-native (every step is a container)
  • YAML pipeline definition
  • Multi-platform (Linux, ARM, Windows)
  • Secrets management
  • Matrix builds
  • Cron scheduling
  • Multiple SCM support (Gitea, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket)

    • Example Pipeline


    steps:

    test:

    image: node:20

    commands:

  • npm ci
  • npm test

    • build:

    image: node:20

    commands:

  • npm run build

    • deploy:

    image: plugins/docker

    settings:

    repo: myrepo/myapp

    tags: latest


    Deployment


    1. Deploy Woodpecker on TinyPod

    2. Connect to your Git forge (Gitea, GitHub)

    3. Add .woodpecker.yml to your repos

    4. Push code, pipelines run automatically


    Resources: 1 CPU, 512 MB RAM for the server. Agents need resources for building.