Summary

In this chapter, we described the part that runners play in GitLab CI/CD pipelines. We learned that runners can be thought of as the “muscle” of CI/CD executing jobs specified in .gitlab-ci.yml. Runners can be installed as standalone programs on most computer platforms and can be shared with all projects in GitLab, or with only certain projects or groups. Moreover, wherever you have a runner installed, you can choose the execution environment it uses to run CI/CD tasks.

Regardless of your role, it is helpful to understand how runner settings can affect pipeline performance, application security, and observability in the development life cycle. We encourage you to practice the process of installing and registering runners, even if maintaining the runner infrastructure is not part of your day-to-day responsibilities. A confident knowledge level of runner architecture and workflows will make you a better software practitioner as you continue your GitLab journey...