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.

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
26.04 (Development)	ubuntu-rolling	26	3.14
26.04 LTS (Current)	ubuntu-latest	24	3.14, 3.13
22.04 LTS (Previous)	ubuntu-previous	22	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	26	3.14
44 (Current)	fedora-latest	24	3.14
41 (Previous)	fedora-previous	22	3.13

Debian images

View all available tags and versions →

Debian Version	Alias Tag	Node.js	Python Versions Available
sid (Forky - Sid/Unstable)	debian-sid	26	3.13
13 (Trixie - Stable)	debian-latest	24	3.13
12 (Bookworm - Oldstable)	debian-oldstable	22	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
• amd64 support - Multi-arch builds incompatible with current build environment
• 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 docker.io package on Ubuntu/Debian, moby-engine on Fedora, all with 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)
• Deadsnakes PPA repository (non-rolling Ubuntu releases only)

Note

* LLVM apt repo is available on Fedora only. Excluded from Ubuntu (lags new releases) and Debian (SHA1 signing key, rejected since 2026-02-01). Use the distro clang package or LLVM's install script.

** HashiCorp repository is available on Fedora and Debian (excluding sid/unstable). Excluded from Ubuntu images because HashiCorp is consistently slow to publish apt repos for new Ubuntu releases; install terraform/vault/consul via direct download, tfenv, or asdf.

Runtime languages:

• Node.js with npm/npx (single version per image: oldest supported LTS for 'previous/oldstable' releases, newest LTS for 'latest/stable' releases, newest stable for 'rolling/rawhide/sid' releases)
• Go (latest stable release across all images)
• Java (default JDK for each distro release) with Gradle (Ubuntu only - not available in Fedora or Debian's package repositories)
• Python (native OS version, plus optionally latest stable Python from deadsnakes PPA for non-rolling Ubuntu releases)
• uv package manager
• Rust toolchain manager (rustup) with minimal profile (stable toolchain for stable distros, nightly toolchain for rolling/rawhide/sid releases)
• 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.