setup-buildx-action VS runner

Good luck running this locally. There's no script code to speak of, just references to external "actions" and parameters (for example, https://github.com/docker/setup-buildx-action).

Some CI platforms are just a simple glue layer (Gitlab CI - which I prefer - is one of them), but in most cases Github CI is not. Maybe it adds to the author frustration?

Set up Docker Buildx: We will use the docker/setup-buildx-action action to set up Docker Buildx.

There’s an amazing docker/bake-action which makes it insanely easy to build all of your containers in the most optimal way. Since we’ve set the group “default” block in the docker-bake.hcl, config is very minimal. One step in your GitHub Action workflow file will build all of your images and will push all of your cache layers, tag all of your containers, and push all your final images. You’ll still have to do things like checkout the code and don’t forget that you’ll want to use the docker/setup-buildx-action since bake is a buildx feature. There’s one quick gotcha for the actual docker/bake-action. We don’t want to push PR builds and we don’t want to pollute the cache with PR builds.

To be clear, that article does NOT provide a solution for avoiding QEMU. I suggested it because it describes "the hard way" to get a single image multi-arch image. The github action crazy-max/ghaction-docker-buildx has been archived and replaced by docker/setup-qemu-action and docker/setup-buildx-action, which it seems like you were already using.

Third step is docker/setup-buildx-action configures buildx, which is a Docker CLI plugin that provides enhanced build capabilities.

We then use the docker/setup-buildx-action action to initialize an environment to build Docker images:

The setup-buildx-action configures Docker Buildx to create a builder instance for running the image build. The following step build-push-action, makes use of that instance to build your Docker image. The build-push-action supports all of the features provided by BuildKit out of the box. In our simple example, we are only specifying the Docker context, but more advanced features like SSH, secrets, and build args are supported.

# Get the repository's code - name: Checkout uses: actions/checkout@v2 # https://github.com/docker/setup-qemu-action - name: Set up QEMU uses: docker/setup-qemu-action@v1 # https://github.com/docker/setup-buildx-action - name: Set up Docker Buildx id: buildx uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v1

docker/setup-buildx-action@v1 - we use it to setup the docker builder

In the case of GitHub Actions, it's made more painful by the lack of support for YAML anchors, which provide a bare minimum of composability.

https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/1182

Even if you don’t pick Avalonia, their notes for Mac distribution look useful:

https://docs.avaloniaui.net/docs/distribution-publishing/mac...

For example, the GitHub actions runner itself is a modern .NET core project with CI except for .app packaging.

https://github.com/actions/runner/tree/main/.github/workflow...

This probably answers your question:

https://github.com/actions/runner/blob/a4c57f27477077e57545a...

$ mkdir actions-runner && cd actions-runner $ curl -o actions-runner-osx-arm64-2.311.0.tar.gz -L https://github.com/actions/runner/releases/download/v2.311.0/actions-runner-osx-arm64-2.311.0.tar.gz % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0 100 98.1M 100 98.1M 0 0 20.0M 0 0:00:04 0:00:04 --:--:-- 23.5M $ echo "fa2f107dbce709807bae014fb3121f5dbe106211b6bbe3484c41e3b30828d6b2 actions-runner-osx-arm64-2.311.0.tar.gz" | shasum -a 256 -c actions-runner-osx-arm64-2.311.0.tar.gz: OK $ tar xzf ./actions-runner-osx-arm64-2.311.0.tar.gz ❯ ./config.sh --url https://github.com/dpills/devops-quick-start-guide --token AGDCRGCMZWN34QIVISIO5XXXXXX -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ | | / ___(_) |_| | | |_ _| |__ / \ ___| |_(_) ___ _ __ ___ | | | | _| | __| |_| | | | | '_ \ / _ \ / __| __| |/ _ \| '_ \/ __| | | | |_| | | |_| _ | |_| | |_) | / ___ \ (__| |_| | (_) | | | \__ \ | | \____|_|\__|_| |_|\__,_|_.__/ /_/ \_\___|\__|_|\___/|_| |_|___/ | | | | Self-hosted runner registration | | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Authentication √ Connected to GitHub # Runner Registration Enter the name of the runner group to add this runner to: [press Enter for Default] Enter the name of runner: [press Enter for dpills-mac] This runner will have the following labels: 'self-hosted', 'macOS', 'ARM64' Enter any additional labels (ex. label-1,label-2): [press Enter to skip] √ Runner successfully added √ Runner connection is good # Runner settings Enter name of work folder: [press Enter for _work] √ Settings Saved. ❯ ./run.sh √ Connected to GitHub Current runner version: '2.311.0' 2023-10-27 13:32:16Z: Listening for Jobs

A runner is where your action's jobs will be run. It can be a hosted virtual environment, or you can self-host a runner in your machine.

If i understand this writing correctly (https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/904), running Windows containers in a windows-latest GH Actions host is not possible. While using a self-hosted runner on a Windows server might be an option, this is not what I want since it is a package repo for a well-known open source project, think of the package repo part as a mini-Conan. I wouldn't know who would want to host that. In the best case we would stay with just GH Actions to keep everything confined in one space :)