Last January we introduced [the autoscaling runner scale sets mode](https://github.com/actions/actions-runner-controller/discussions/2174) to actions runner controller (ARC) and this mode is now generally available. We published the announcement in the [GitHub changelog](https://github.blog/changelog/2023-06-30-github-actions-actions-runner-general-availability/) end of June, and we're excited to share the news here as well.

Last January we introduced the autoscaling runner scale sets mode to actions runner controller (ARC) and this mode is now generally available. We published the announcement in the GitHub changelog end of June, and we're excited to share the news here as well.

A few things to clarify

If you're not familiar with this new mode, I highly encourage you to either read our documentation. If you want a more guided alternative, you can watch this deep dive video by yours truly.

Maintenance and support

The autoscaling runner scale sets mode is now generally available, which means that GitHub will provide maintenance and support for this mode. We recommend that you create tickets with our support team for assistance.

Issues created in this repository will be triaged, and we will address them based on priority. We urge you to read our documentation and put all the effort possible to try to resolve the issues by yourselves. We have extensive testing pipelines, and we're observing the behaviour of this product across different environments. When a wide-spread issue is identified, we will address it as soon as possible. If you face a problem, more likely than not, it's something related to the specifics of your environment.

Please don't make us spend time on issues that could have been avoided by a quick read of the documentation or a quick search in the issues / discussions. This will take away from the time that could have been spent addressing more important problems. We cannot provide any guarantees towards response times for issues created in this repository.

The following modes and assets are supported by GitHub:

• Autoscaling runner scale sets mode
• All the resources belonding to: apis/actions.github.com/v1alpha1
• ARC CI and release workflows
• The new runner image
• The gha-runner-scale-set-* helm charts: controller and runnner scale set
• ARC documentation: gh.io/arc-docs

Everything else, including but not limited to:

• Pull driven scaling, and Webhook driven scaling modes
• All the resources belonging to the actions.summerwind.net/v1alpha1
• The actions-runner-controller helm charts
• The old runner images:
  • actions-runner
  • actions-runner-dind-rootless
  • actions-runner-dind
• Pre-migration actions-runner-controller organization

Will continue to be maintained by the community only led by @mumoshu. GitHub will not provide any maintenance or support for these assets.

Releases

We will continue to release new versions of the autoscaling runner scale sets mode, and we will continue to publish the new runner image with every runner binaries release. We will also continue to publish the helm charts for the controller and the runner scale set.

The helm charts for the autoscaling runner scale sets mode will only be published as OCI packages. We believe this is the best way to distribute helm charts, and we will not publish them as tarballs via GitHub pages.

• The helm chart and controller-manager images are available here: https://github.com/orgs/actions/packages?repo_name=actions-runner-controller
• The runner image is available here: https://github.com/actions/runner/pkgs/container/actions-runner

All legacy assets are published to the actions-runner-controller organization.

What's next?

The release gha-runner-scale-set-0.5.0 is currently our highest priority. This release will include the following changes: https://github.com/actions/actions-runner-controller/milestone/11.

We do not have any plans to do a 1.x.x release at the moment. Even though we are generally available, we don't consider our APIs or helm charts stable enough to be considered 1.x.x. We will continue to release 0.x.x versions until we feel confident that we can provide stable and backward compatible APIs and helm charts.

Contributions

We highly appreciate all the community's contributions to ARC. Please continue creating issues and discussions, and we will continue to triage them and address them based on priority. We're working on new contributions guidelines to manage the process of accepting contributions. We will share them as soon as they're ready.

Until then, if you plan to spend effort and time on a substantial change (anything that's larger than 10 lines of code), please open an issue and discuss it with us first. We offer no guarantees that your changes will be accepted.

Thank you all for all your trust and support ❤️ and thank you to countless contributors who help make ARC awesome!

Originally posted by @Link- in https://github.com/actions/actions-runner-controller/discussions/2775

This issue is an announcement rather than a defined change request. Start with the linked ARC documentation, changelog, controllers/actions.github.com paths, and gha-runner-scale-set Helm charts; no files, tests, or acceptance criteria are named, so there is no specific definition of done.