Runners
Runners
Runners are used to execute jobs in GitLab CI
Executors interface with infrastructure
Shell
Jobs are executed in the context of the runner
Using containers
Dedicated execution environment per job
Executor talks to infrastructure:
- Creates volume for working directory
- Run helper container for checkout into volume
- Run build container for build using volume
Services are executed in separate containers next to the build container
Docker
Jobs are executed in a dedicated container
Kubernetes
Jobs are executed in a dedicated containers in a pod per pipeline
Runner scopes
Instance runners
Shared across all groups and projects
Reserved for instance administrators
Managed from admin area
Group/project runners
Shared across a group or a project
Accessible to members with Owner role
Shared runners can be disabled
Runner tags
Runners can have tags
Tags specify features based on…
- Operating system, e.g. linux, windows
- Networking locations, e.g. datacenter, aws, azure
- Hardware, e.g. compute, gpu
- Runner configuration, e.g. cache
Selecting runners in pipelines
Each can use a different runner:
job_name:
tags:
- foo
All features work across different runners
Pro tip: Special purpose executors
Instance executor (builtin)
Beta support for AWS
Experimantal support for Azure and GCP