woodpecker/docs/versioned_docs/version-2.5/20-usage/25-workflows.md

Workflows

A pipeline has at least one workflow. A workflow is a set of steps that are executed in sequence using the same workspace which is a shared folder containing the repository and all the generated data from previous steps.

In case there is a single configuration in .woodpecker.yaml Woodpecker will create a pipeline with a single workflow.

By placing the configurations in a folder which is by default named .woodpecker/ Woodpecker will create a pipeline with multiple workflows each named by the file they are defined in. Only .yml and .yaml files will be used and files in any subfolders like .woodpecker/sub-folder/test.yaml will be ignored.

You can also set some custom path like .my-ci/pipelines/ instead of .woodpecker/ in the project settings.

Benefits of using workflows

• faster lint/test feedback, the workflow doesn't have to run fully to have a lint status pushed to the remote
• better organization of a pipeline along various concerns using one workflow for: testing, linting, building and deploying
• utilizing more agents to speed up the execution of the whole pipeline

Example workflow definition

:::warning Please note that files are only shared between steps of the same workflow (see File changes are incremental). That means you cannot access artifacts e.g. from the build workflow in the deploy workflow. If you still need to pass artifacts between the workflows you need use some storage plugin (e.g. one which stores files in an Amazon S3 bucket). :::

.woodpecker/
├── .build.yaml
├── .deploy.yaml
├── .lint.yaml
└── .test.yaml

steps:
  - name: build
    image: debian:stable-slim
    commands:
      - echo building
      - sleep 5

steps:
  - name: deploy
    image: debian:stable-slim
    commands:
      - echo deploying

depends_on:
  - lint
  - build
  - test

steps:
  - name: test
    image: debian:stable-slim
    commands:
      - echo testing
      - sleep 5

depends_on:
  - build

steps:
  - name: lint
    image: debian:stable-slim
    commands:
      - echo linting
      - sleep 5

Status lines

Each workflow will report its own status back to your forge.

Flow control

The workflows run in parallel on separate agents and share nothing.

Dependencies between workflows can be set with the depends_on element. A workflow doesn't execute until all of its dependencies finished successfully.

The name for a depends_on entry is the filename without the path, leading dots and without the file extension .yml or .yaml. If the project config for example uses .woodpecker/ as path for CI files with a file named .woodpecker/.lint.yaml the corresponding depends_on entry would be lint.

 steps:
   - name: deploy
     image: debian:stable-slim
     commands:
       - echo deploying

+depends_on:
+  - lint
+  - build
+  - test

Workflows that need to run even on failures should set the runs_on tag.

 steps:
   - name: notify
     image: debian:stable-slim
     commands:
       - echo notifying

 depends_on:
   - deploy

+runs_on: [ success, failure ]

:::info Some workflows don't need the source code, like creating a notification on failure. Read more about skip_clone at pipeline syntax :::