If you’re using Actions Runner Controller, the provided base image may not be enough. In fact, it’s important to build your own to ensure that you have all the dependencies you need for your workflows.

Do you know what the main threat is to your CI/CD systems? It’s not the code you write, the tools you use, or the cloud provider you rely on. It’s the supply chain, and that is frequently the most vulnerable part of the development process. Today, let’s understand why.

Minimizing network activity improves your build times, speeds up builds, and reduces costs. With ARC, you rely on multiple Actions steps in your workflow. What if you could avoid needing to download your most frequently used Actions? This post walks you through creating images with an Actions archive cache to eliminate those downloads.

If you’re going to build custom images for ARC or standalone VM runners, then you probably want to take some time to preload it with the tools that matter to your builds. If you want that process to work well for the GitHub-provided tools and actions/setup- Actions, then you’ll want to know how to prepopulate the runner’s tool cache.

Understanding ARC begins with understanding what it does (and does not do) to create runners on Kubernetes. The process is surprisingly straight-forward, and understanding it is key to mastering ARC.