Just to add to this point. I have been running a separate namespace for CI and it is possible to limit total CPU and memory use for each namespace. This saved me from having to run a VM. Everything (even junk) goes onto k8s isolated by separate namespaces.

If limits and namespaces like this are interesting to you, the k8s resources to read up on are ResourceQuota and LimitRange.

I looked at Tekton, but the complexity of doing simple things put me off. I have been running woodpecker which now has Kubernetes support.

Installing the Helm Chart for the Woodpecker agent gives K8s support with no special configuration needed. My needs are simple but I have been really impressed with how easy it has been.

The manifest of my Kubernetes cluster is managed in a Git repository and is automatically deployed via a GitOps tool named Flux CD. When I push changes to the repository, such as adding a new application or upgrading Docker images, the deployment occurs within a few minutes.

This is the way.

Although I use Flux ImageUpdateAutomation instead of Renovate Bot. Did you consider using Flux to do auto updates? Are there any downsides that made you choose Renovate Bot instead?

I found the most interesting bit was this at the end:

• You can now specify a new RestartPolicy: Always configuration for an init container.
• If you add that new config, you now have a sidecar container.
• A sidecar container starts before all ordinary containers (because it’s an init container), and—this is the big part—it now terminates after all the ordinary containers all terminate.
• If for some reason your sidecar container dies while ordinary containers are running, it will be restarted automatically. (This is the “Always” bit.)
• Finally, unlike with normal init containers that each wait in turn to complete before the next starts, the other init containers do not wait for sidecar containers to complete before starting. Which is good, because they’re not going to complete until much later.