GitHub Actions: Runners, Containers, Services, and Self-Hosted Execution

GitHub-hosted runners, self-hosted runners, job containers, service containers, labels, and operational patterns for GitHub Actions execution.

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## Choosing and targeting runners

Use a GitHub-hosted Ubuntu runner

runs-on: ubuntu-latest

# Run a job on Linux.

Target a self-hosted runner

runs-on: [self-hosted, linux, x64]

# Run on infrastructure you manage.

Run the job inside a container

container:
  image: node:20-bookworm

# Use a container image as the job runtime.

## Services and operational patterns

Start a Redis service for tests

services:
  redis:
    image: redis:7
    ports:
      - 6379:6379

# Use a service container for integration or cache tests.

Label-based runner targeting

runs-on: [self-hosted, gpu, linux]

# Match jobs to specialized self-hosted infrastructure.

Inspect the workspace path

echo "$GITHUB_WORKSPACE"

# Print the checkout path on the runner.

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