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setup drone ci

pitfalls

  • drone needs a public ip or domain name so the git repository webhooks are working
  • DRONE_SERVER_PROTO and DRONE_SERVER_HOST are used for the creation of the webhook so the external protocol and public ip/ domain name are needed
  • you may want to set DRONE_LOGS_DEBUG=true and DRONE_LOGS_PRETTY=true to true until your server is completly running.

troubleshooting

install

Follow the official install guide. The following code snippets might be helpful for copypasta, but you might want to read the offical install guide before. If the server is running but the builds do not get triggered check this trouble shooting guide. For asking questions or searching for one use the discourse forum.

# 1. generate DRONE_RPC_SECRET with: 
openssl rand -hex 16

# 2. create a bridge network so the contains can address each other with their name
docker network create drone

# 3. start drone master

docker run \
  --volume=/var/lib/drone:/data \
  --env=DRONE_GITHUB_CLIENT_ID=<FROM_GITHUB> \
  --env=DRONE_GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET=<FROM_GITHUB_SECRET> \
  --env=DRONE_RPC_SECRET=<GENERATED_SECRET_FROM_STEP_1> \
  --env=DRONE_SERVER_HOST=ci.weyrich.dev \
  --env=DRONE_SERVER_PROTO=https \
  --env=DRONE_USER_FILTER=crowdsalat \
  --env=DRONE_USER_CREATE=username:crowdsalat,admin:true \
  --env=DRONE_LOGS_PRETTY=true \
  --env=DRONE_LOGS_COLOR=true \
  --env=DRONE_LOGS_DEBUG=true \
  --publish=180:80 \
  --restart=always \
  --detach=true \
  --name=drone \
  --network drone \
  drone/drone:1

# 4. start drone docker runner:

docker run -d \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -e DRONE_RPC_PROTO=HTTP \
  -e DRONE_RPC_HOST=drone:80 \
  -e DRONE_RPC_SECRET=<GENERATED_SECRET_FROM_STEP_1> \
  -e DRONE_RUNNER_CAPACITY=2 \
  -e DRONE_RUNNER_NAME=drone_docker_runner \
  -e DRONE_LOGS_DEBUG=true \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  --restart always \
  --name drone_runner \
  --network drone \
  drone/drone-runner-docker:1

start containers on host

  • it is important that the drone docker runner is started with the -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock argument. Every pipeline step starts a new container. Because of the mount of the docker.sock the stated container will run on the host not inside the docker container of the runner.
  • If you want to build or start containers on the docker host you need to add a host volume which points to var/run/docker.sock on the host and reference it in the pipline steps where docker is used.

cache stuff

To cache downloaded libraries between build you can create a host volume and use map it in the build step to the directory e.g. /root/.m2/repository. Note that a admin user needs to mark the repository in which the pipelines runs to be 'trusted'.

variable resolution

default environmental variables

You can us variables as following: ${VARIABLE_NAME}

noteworthy stuff

  • by convention drone build file is called .drone.yml
  • by convention drone resources are saved in .drone folder
  • parallel pipelines are separated by a document separator --- in the .drone.yml
  • dependent pipelines can be defined with the depends_on directive
  • steps in a pipeline share a (build-) temporal volume which is called workspace and allows to share state between the steps eventthought they are running in different containers.
  • In order to use the drone cli you must configure the drone server address and a admin user access token. For convenience you can save two environment variables which are described when you run drone without parameters.