patchFinishedRunnerCleanupPatchIDStatus wrapped a plain merge patch in retry.RetryOnConflict. A plain merge patch carries no resourceVersion precondition, so the API server has nothing to reject: the write always succeeds, the retry can never fire, and the surrounding machinery reads as protection while providing none. The exposure is worse here than for the applied revision, which at least refuses to move backwards. This helper compares for equality and then writes whatever patch ID the reconcile is carrying, so it is willing to lower the marker. A reconcile serving an older patch ID can therefore overwrite a marker recorded for a newer one, and the scale-up guard then stops suppressing for the patch it actually serviced -- creating the replacement runners this layer exists to prevent. Re-fetching through the API reader narrows that window to the gap between the read and the patch, but it cannot close it, because the decision is only as fresh as the moment it was taken. The optimistic lock is what makes the write conditional on that decision still holding; a stale attempt now conflicts and is retried rather than silently recording the wrong patch ID. The test asserts on the patch bytes the reconciler actually emits rather than on an independently constructed patch, so it cannot pass while the production code builds its patch some other way. A second test covers the early return, since an unconditional write would churn the status on every reconcile for the same patch. Co-authored-by: Copilot App <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Actions Runner Controller (ARC)
About
Actions Runner Controller (ARC) is a Kubernetes operator that orchestrates and scales self-hosted runners for GitHub Actions.
With ARC, you can create runner scale sets that automatically scale based on the number of workflows running in your repository, organization, or enterprise. Because controlled runners can be ephemeral and based on containers, new runner instances can scale up or down rapidly and cleanly. For more information about autoscaling, see "Autoscaling with self-hosted runners."
You can set up ARC on Kubernetes using Helm, then create and run a workflow that uses runner scale sets. For more information about runner scale sets, see "Deploying runner scale sets with Actions Runner Controller."
People
Actions Runner Controller (ARC) is an open-source project currently developed and maintained in collaboration with the GitHub Actions team, external maintainers @mumoshu and @toast-gear, various contributors, and the awesome community.
If you think the project is awesome and is adding value to your business, please consider directly sponsoring community maintainers and individual contributors via GitHub Sponsors.
If you are already the employer of one of the contributors, sponsoring via GitHub Sponsors might not be an option. Just support them by other means!
See the sponsorship dashboard for the former and the current sponsors.
Getting Started
To give ARC a try with just a handful of commands, please refer to the Quickstart guide.
For an overview of ARC, please refer to About ARC.
With the introduction of autoscaling runner scale sets, the existing autoscaling modes are now legacy. The legacy modes have certain use cases and will continue to be maintained by the community only.
For further information on what is supported by GitHub and what's managed by the community, please refer to this announcement discussion.
Documentation
ARC documentation is available on docs.github.com.
Legacy documentation
The following documentation is for the legacy autoscaling modes that continue to be maintained by the community:
- Quickstart guide
- About ARC
- Installing ARC
- Authenticating to the GitHub API
- Deploying ARC runners
- Adding ARC runners to a repository, organization, or enterprise
- Automatically scaling runners
- Using custom volumes
- Using ARC runners in a workflow
- Managing access with runner groups
- Configuring Windows runners
- Using ARC across organizations
- Using entrypoint features
- Deploying alternative runners
- Monitoring and troubleshooting
Contributing
We welcome contributions from the community. For more details on contributing to the project (including requirements), please refer to "Getting Started with Contributing."
Troubleshooting
We are very happy to help you with any issues you have. Please refer to the "Troubleshooting" section for common issues.