ACT Runner Images

Production-ready runner images for Forgejo Actions and ACT with comprehensive language support and nightly updates.

Note

Images are built nightly on my Forgejo instance and automatically mirrored to GitHub Container Registry for optimal CDN performance. Both ghcr.io/tcpipuk/act-runner and git.tomfos.tr/tom/act-runner should be identical multi-architecture images supporting amd64, arm64, ppc64le, and s390x.

Usage examples

GitHub Actions:

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container: ghcr.io/tcpipuk/act-runner:ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: python --version
      - run: node --version

ACT:

act -P ubuntu-latest=ghcr.io/tcpipuk/act-runner:ubuntu-latest

Ubuntu images

View all available tags and versions →

Ubuntu Version	Alias Tag	Node.js	Python Versions Available
25.04 (Development)	ubuntu-rolling	24/22	3.13
24.04 LTS (Current)	ubuntu-latest	24/22	3.12, 3.13
22.04 LTS (Previous)	ubuntu-previous	22/20	3.10, 3.13

Note: Italicised versions are the native Python for each Ubuntu release. Non-native versions use the latest stable Python (3.13) from deadsnakes PPA.

Fedora images

View all available tags and versions →

Fedora Version	Alias Tag	Node.js	Python Versions Available
Rawhide (Development)	fedora-rawhide	24/22	3.14
42 (Current)	fedora-latest	24/22	3.13
41 (Previous)	fedora-previous	22/20	3.13

Debian images

View all available tags and versions →

Debian Version	Alias Tag	Node.js	Python Versions Available
13 (Trixie - Testing)	debian-testing	24/22	3.13
13 (Trixie - Stable)	debian-latest	24/22	3.13
12 (Bookworm - Oldstable)	debian-oldstable	22/20	3.11

Note: Debian images use only the native Python version for each release, providing better system integration than external PPAs.

Why these images?

• Wide compatibility - Works with Forgejo Actions, Gitea Actions, and ACT
• Multi-architecture support - Built for amd64, arm64, ppc64le, and s390x
• Always current - Automatically tracks all supported Node.js and Python versions
• Nightly updates with intelligent layering - only download what's changed
• Pre-configured tools - Docker, build-essential, gh CLI, and development libraries ready to go
• Smart caching - Layered architecture means updates are incremental, not full re-downloads

What's included

All images include:

• Build essentials (gcc, g++, make, cmake, pkg-config)
• Full Docker stack including daemon, CLI and Compose (via Ubuntu's docker.io package for guaranteed multi-architecture support and Docker-in-Docker capabilities)
• GitHub CLI (gh)
• Git and Git LFS
• Common utilities (curl, wget, jq, tar, zip)
• Pre-configured package repositories (LLVM, Kubernetes, HashiCorp, Microsoft)

Runtime languages:

• Node.js with npm/npx (LTS versions for "previous" releases, latest stable for others)
• Python (native OS version or latest stable from deadsnakes PPA for Ubuntu)
• uv package manager
• Pre-installed Python development tools (ruff, mypy, pytest, black, isort, prek)
• Compatible with actions/setup-node
• See docs/python.md for full details

Building your own

Need to customise these images? See docs/self-build.md for detailed build instructions.

Credits

Inspired by catthehacker/docker_images. This project provides automated builds with wider version coverage and optimised layer caching.

License

MIT - See LICENSE file for details.