Setting up Continuous Integration using Drone CI

Published on September 23, 2024 | Last updated on September 23, 2024

#blog #development #infrastructure #ansible

Sci-Fi Space Loading dock with Drone CI Imagery

In this post I setup Drone CI to build my code automatically when pushed to Github.

I'm choosing Drone CI because it is easy to deploy via Docker, and supports defining builds using a simple YAML syntax.

This is a brief blog post, giving me time to write about the painful process of deploying a site using Ansible alone, which will pave the way for a streamlined process using Terraform later.

Install Drone Control Node

Steps:

Select a node to run Drone CI on. Setup DNS and SSL termination via a load balancer if desired.
Whip up a compose.yaml file based on their example command line invocation

version: '3'

services:
  drone:
    image: drone/drone:2
    container_name: drone
    volumes:
      - /var/lib/drone:/data
    environment:
      - DRONE_GITHUB_CLIENT_ID=xxxx
      - DRONE_GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET=xxxx
      - DRONE_RPC_SECRET=xxxx
      - DRONE_SERVER_HOST=drone.example.com
      - DRONE_SERVER_PROTO=https
      - DRONE_USER_FILTER=xxxx
    ports:
      - "11080:80"
      - "11443:443"
    restart: always

Fire it up with docker compose up -d
Fire up a runner node by creating a similar compose.yaml for the runner:

services:
  runner:
    image: drone/drone-runner-docker:1
    container_name: runner
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
    environment:
      - DRONE_RPC_PROTO=https
      - DRONE_RPC_HOST=drone.example.com
      - DRONE_RPC_SECRET=xxxx
      - DRONE_RUNNER_CAPACITY=2
      - DRONE_RUNNER_NAME=runner-1
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    restart: always

Start a Drone Builder

Start a Drone builder by creating .drone.yml. You may want to store some secrets in the Drone CI environment. This can be done via the web interface, or via CLI.

The code below is a slightly edited version I created for deploying a simple Django application. It only builds the pipeline for the production and staging branches.

kind: pipeline
type: docker
name: default

trigger:
  branch:
    - staging
    - production
  event:
    - push
    - pull_request

steps:
  - name: build main docker image
    image: plugins/docker
    settings:
      context: rev
      username:
        from_secret: dockerhub_username
      password:
        from_secret: dockerhub_password
      repo: ${IMAGE_NAME}-${DRONE_BRANCH}
      dockerfile: rev/Dockerfile
      cache_from: ${IMAGE_NAME}-${DRONE_BRANCH}
      tags:
        - latest
      when:
        changeset:
          - rev/Dockerfile
          - rev/**/*

  - name: build nginx docker image
    image: plugins/docker
    settings:
      context: nginx
      username:
        from_secret: dockerhub_username
      password:
        from_secret: dockerhub_password
      repo: ${IMAGE_NAME}-${DRONE_BRANCH}
      dockerfile: nginx/Dockerfile
      cache_from: ${IMAGE_NAME}-nginx-${DRONE_BRANCH}
      tags:
        - latest
      when:
        changeset:
          - nginx/Dockerfile
          - nginx/**/*

  - name: run ansible playbook
    image: scootekunst/ansible:latest
    environment:
      SSH_KEY:
        from_secret: ssh_key_${DRONE_BRANCH}
      ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING: "False"
      ANSIBLE_VAULT_PASSWORD:
        from_secret: ansible_vault_password_${DRONE_BRANCH}
    commands:
      - mkdir -p /root/.ssh
      - export APP_ENV=${DRONE_BRANCH}
      - echo "$${SSH_KEY}" > /root/.ssh/id_ed25519_drone
      - chmod 600 /root/.ssh/id_ed25519_drone
      - echo "$${ANSIBLE_VAULT_PASSWORD}" > /tmp/vault_password
      - cat /tmp/vault_password | base64
      - ansible-playbook --inventory playbooks/inventories/${DRONE_BRANCH} --vault-password-file /tmp/vault_password playbooks/playbook.yml --tags "staging,ingress" -vv
---
kind: secret
name: dockerconfig
get:
  path: docker
  name: config

Off to the races!

With these steps, every time I push to the staging or production branch, Drone will build two docker images and run my Ansible playbook, deploying my site to a production or staging environment.