Drone is a container-native continuous integration and deployment platform that executes pipelines from repository YAML definitions. Originally developed as an open-source project, Drone is now part of the Harness ecosystem. It provides a lightweight, easy-to-self-host CI/CD solution with server/runner components communicating over shared RPC secrets.
- Container-based pipeline execution with Docker/Kubernetes backends
- Repository-local
.drone.yml pipeline definitions
- Git provider OAuth integration (GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Bitbucket)
- Scalable runner architecture with isolated build environments
- Pipeline as code with step-level granularity
- Built-in secret management and encrypted variables
- Webhook-driven automatic triggers
- Simple, minimal architecture (server + runners)
- Self-hosted CI for containerized workloads
- Lightweight CI/CD stacks integrated with Git providers
- Teams that prefer simple YAML-driven pipelines
- Microservices with per-repository pipeline definitions
- Organizations seeking minimal operational overhead
- Core: Go
- Container Runtime: Docker, Kubernetes
- Database: SQLite (default), PostgreSQL, MySQL
- Web UI: React-based interface
- Communication: gRPC/RPC between server and runners
- Apache-2.0 (open-source Drone)
- Commercial tiers available via Harness
- ✅ Open-source Drone remains available under the Harness ecosystem
- Latest stable version: 2.27.x series
- Development model: Community edition + Harness commercial platform
- Acquisition: Acquired by Harness in 2020
- Repository: https://github.com/harness/drone (Harness ecosystem)
- Documentation: https://docs.drone.io/
¶ History and References