Woodpecker CI

Woodpecker keeps a CI/CD engine small without giving up extensibility. It suits a team that wants pipelines on its own hardware rather than a hosted build service billed by the minute, and it does not demand a database cluster before the first job runs.

The engine splits into a server and agents. SQLite is the default database, so there is nothing extra to provision, and at idle the server needs around 100 MB of memory while an agent needs about 30 MB. That footprint fits comfortably on a single modest machine.

A few things shape how Woodpecker is adopted and extended.

• Several install paths: are documented in the administration guide, so the engine fits containers or a plain server.
• Plugins: extend pipelines, and a plugin overview site collects both core team and community entries.
• Codeberg: runs Woodpecker as its main CI/CD engine, a public instance operating at real scale.
• Translations: are managed on the project's self-hosted Weblate instance, with a public overview of language coverage.
• Apache 2.0: covers the source, with per-file headers naming the license and copyright that apply, while the docs directory carries a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Documentation for installation, administration and pipeline configuration lives on the project site. Funding comes from backers on Open Collective and GitHub Sponsors rather than a paid tier, which is worth knowing when you weigh how the project will be maintained over time.