Drone CI

Drone is a container-native continuous integration and continuous deployment platform that automates build, test, and release pipelines using Docker containers. Originally created by Brad Rydzewski in 2014 as an open-source project, it was acquired by Harness in 2020 but remains freely available under the Apache 2.0 license. The platform executes every pipeline step inside an isolated Docker container, ensuring reproducible builds and eliminating environment configuration drift. Configuration is defined as code using a simple YAML syntax stored alongside source repositories, enabling full version control of CI/CD workflows. Drone supports over 30 source code management integrations including GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Gitea, and Gogs. Its extensible plugin architecture allows teams to create custom pipeline steps using any Docker image, with over 100 community-maintained plugins available for tasks like code analysis, artifact publishing, notifications, and deployments. The platform supports matrix builds, conditional execution, DAG-based pipeline dependencies, and parallel execution across multiple agents. Enterprise features include SSO authentication via OAuth and SAML, role-based access control, audit logging, and centralized secret management. Notable organizations using Drone include Cisco, Honda, Tesla, Panasonic, GoPro, and BuzzFeed. The self-hosted server can be deployed on Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, or any container runtime, while Drone Cloud provides free CI minutes for open-source projects.