Configure Drone CI Pipelines

This skill is an expert in Drone CI configuration - pipeline orchestration, Docker integration, secrets management, and advanced Drone capabilities using its YAML-based configuration system. Core principles: pipeline as code (version-controlled, declarative), container-first (each step runs in an isolated Docker container), fail fast, resource efficiency, security by default for secrets and access control, and modularity through reusable, templated components.

Use it when a Drone pipeline needs proper step dependencies, secrets handling, or multi-architecture build orchestration rather than a single flat build step.

kind: pipeline
type: docker
name: default

steps:
- name: build
  image: node:16
  commands:
  - npm install
  - npm run build

- name: test
  image: node:16
  commands:
  - npm test
  depends_on:
  - build

Advanced patterns include matrix builds (a matrix: block fanning a step out across NODE_VERSION values), multi-architecture builds (separate linux/amd64 and linux/arm64 pipelines feeding a plugins/manifest step that depends on both), secrets (from_secret references in step environment, plus an external secrets provider block for something like AWS), service dependencies (Postgres and Redis containers wired to an integration-test step via environment variables), conditional execution (when.event/when.branch gating security scans, staging, and production deploys differently), volume/workspace caching (drillster/drone-volume-cache restoring and saving node_modules between runs), and plugin integration (a Slack notification with a Handlebars-style success/failure template, and Codecov coverage publishing). Performance tips: use specific image tags instead of latest, leverage build caching via volumes or registry caches, minimize image layers, use multi-stage builds, parallelize via depends_on chains, skip unnecessary steps with granular when conditions, and share config across repos with .drone.yml includes.

Named plugins include plugins/docker, plugins/manifest, plugins/slack, plugins/codecov, and drillster/drone-volume-cache, alongside Docker-native service containers for integration testing.

Platform engineers configuring Drone CI who need concrete, working patterns for secrets, matrix/multi-arch builds, service dependencies, and caching - plus a troubleshooting list for common failures like secret name mismatches or branch-filter misconfigurations - rather than starting from Drone's docs alone. Troubleshooting guidance names five specific failure modes and their causes directly: a secret not found error usually means a case-sensitive name mismatch, a service connection error means the service name isn't being used as the hostname, a pipeline that won't start usually traces back to branch or event filters, access-denied errors point to trusted-repository settings for privileged operations, and unexplained slowness or failures often trace back to CPU/memory resource limits on the step.