Build a CI/CD pipeline using GitLab-hosted Arm runners
Introduction
Build and use GitLab-hosted Arm runners for CI/CD
Create a GitLab project
Build and configure your Arm64 CI/CD pipeline
Run pipeline and verify results
Next Steps

  Log an issue

  Fork and edit

  Discuss on Discord

Validate and test your Arm64 CI/CD pipeline

This section explains how to run, verify, and test your pipeline and container images on Arm64 infrastructure.

Run the pipeline

Navigate to Build > Pipelines and select Run pipeline:

Image Alt Text:Screenshot of GitLab Build menu showing Pipelines section with Run pipeline button, which triggers the CI/CD workflow to execute on the configured Arm64 runnersGitLab Run pipeline interface

Select individual jobs to view their output and status:

Image Alt Text:GitLab pipeline execution screen showing job output and statusGitLab pipeline execution screen

Verify Arm64 architecture

The lscpu command output confirms you’re building on Arm64 architecture:

Image Alt Text:Terminal output of lscpu command showing Arm64 architecture details including aarch64 designation, Neoverse-N1 CPU model, and 2 CPU cores, confirming the pipeline is executing on GitLab-hosted Arm runnerslscpu output confirming Arm64 architecture

Key information from lscpu output:

  • Architecture: aarch64 (Arm 64-bit)
  • CPU: Neoverse-N1
  • Vendor ID: ARM

This confirms your application compiles natively on Arm64 architecture, producing binaries optimized for Arm processors.

Test the container image

Your built image is stored in GitLab Container Registry. Navigate to Deploy > Container Registry to find your image with tags including latest and the commit SHA.

To test the image on an Arm64 system:

    

        
        
docker login registry.gitlab.com
docker pull registry.gitlab.com/<namespace>/<project>:latest
docker run --rm registry.gitlab.com/<namespace>/<project>:latest

Replace <namespace> and <project> with your GitLab username and project name.

The expected output is:

    

        
        Hello from an Arm64 Docker image built on GitLab hosted Arm runners!
Note

This image runs only on Arm64 systems because it contains an Arm64 binary. To run on x86-64 systems, you need to rebuild using an x86-64 runner or use multi-architecture builds.

Pipeline editor tools

The pipeline editor provides helpful features:

  • Visualize: View your pipeline as a graph showing stage dependencies
  • Validate: Check pipeline syntax before committing changes

Image Alt Text:GitLab visual pipeline editor showing pipeline graph and validation toolsGitLab visual pipeline editor with graph and validation tools

What you’ve accomplished and what’s next

You have:

  • Configured a GitLab project with CI/CD pipeline
  • Built a containerized application on Arm64 runners
  • Verified native Arm64 compilation
  • Published container images to GitLab Container Registry

You can now extend this pipeline for your own applications. GitLab’s Arm64 runners eliminate cross-compilation overhead when building for Arm-based deployment targets, including cloud servers, edge infrastructure, and embedded systems.

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