Support shared configs

[anbraten]

Clear and concise description of the problem

As a user with multiple similar Woodpecker projects, I would like to share some configs between them. This would allow me to adjust configs by only editing it at one place.

Suggested solution

• "importing" pipeline config templates via urls
• some kind of callable pipeline would be nice: a pipeline that is working like a function which will be called by some other pipeline by passing some arguments

Alternative

In the meantime it would be possible to use #915 to use my own config pre-processing service which somehow injects shared configs.

Additional context

No response

Validations

• Read the Contributing Guidelines.
• Read the docs.
• Check that there isn't already an issue that request the same feature to avoid creating a duplicate.

[benyanke]

Adding additional info from the now-closed-as-duplicate #1179:

As someone who has a number of small repos that all require similar CI config, I find gitlab's CI includes very useful.

This allows you to reference yaml documents in another repo and then they are included, and YAML merged, if multiples. This allows more composable pipelines, with more flexibility than the Woodpecker plugins (which are excellent, for some workflows).

gitlab include docs
https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/includes.html

To use my own gitlab repos as an example:

I have a repo at gitlab.com/benyanke/common-ci-configs containing a number of composable CI bits that I use in various projects. One builds and pushes a docker container, one builds a hugo site, one publishes a hugo site to Netlify (a hosting provider), one publishes a hugo site to another provider, one lints, tests, and builds Golang projects, etc. On any given project, instead of needing to redefine all the required logic for a docker or go project, I simply include the go or docker include.

[JFronny]

I have attempted to implement something like this using the External Configuration API, but it seems that woodpecker fails to find pipelines using custom syntax, which my service is supposed to convert (adding an include key, in this case). If that is fixed, implementing this in a separate service would become trivial.
Edit: I have implemented a PoC of this feature as an external service that processes comments in the yaml file here

[genofire]

For me, that is really importent ... i am really thinking of switching to gitlab-ci again for that.

[6543]

For me, that is really importent ... i am really thinking of switching to gitlab-ci again for that.

that's sad but whatever works best for you :/

[anbraten]

https://docs.drone.io/template/