Drone automatically clones your repository and submodules at the start of your build. No configuration is required. You can, however, use the `clone` section of the `.drone.yml` to customize this behavior as needed.
Cloning a private repository requires authentication to the remote system. Drone prefers `git+https` and `netrc` to authenticate, but will fallback to `git+ssh` and deploy keys if not supported.
Drone prefers `git+ssh` for authentication because it allows you to clone multiple private repositories. This is helpful when you have git submodules or third party dependencies you need to download (via `go get` or `npm install` or others) that are sourced from a private repository.
Drone only injects the `netrc` and `id_rsa` files into your build environment if your repository is private, or running in private mode. We do this for security reasons to avoid leaking sensitive data.
You can override the default `git` plugin by specifying an alternative plugin image. An example use case may be integrating with alternate version control systems, such as mercurial:
