Multi-arch build, what about GitLab CI?

Following the previous article where we saw how to build multi arch images using GitHub Actions, we will now show how to do the same thing using another CI. In this article, we’ll show how to use GitLab CI, which is part of the GitLab.

To start building your image with GitLab CI, you will first need to create a .gitlab-ci.yml file at the root of your repository, commit it and push it.

image: docker:stable

variables:
  DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker:2375/
  DOCKER_DRIVER: overlay2

services:
  - docker:dind

build:
  stage: build
  script:
    - docker version

This should result in a build output that shows the version of the Docker CLI and Engine: 

We will now install Docker buildx. Because GitLabCI runs everything in containers and uses any image you want to start this container, we can use one with buildx preinstalled, like the one we used for CircleCI. And as for CircleCI, we need to start a builder instance.

image: jdrouet/docker-with-buildx:stable

variables:
  DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker:2375/
  DOCKER_DRIVER: overlay2

services:
  - docker:dind

build:
  stage: build
  script:
    - docker buildx create --use
    - docker buildx build --platform linux/arm/v7,linux/arm64/v8,linux/amd64 --tag your-username/multiarch-example:gitlab .

And that’s it, your image will now be built for both ARM and x86 platforms.

The last step is now to store the image on the Docker Hub. To do so we’ll need an access token from Docker Hub to get write access.

Once you created it, you’ll have to set in your project CI/CD settings in the Variables section.

We can then add  DOCKER_USERNAME and DOCKER_PASSWORD variables to GitLab CI so that we can login to push our images.

Once this is done, you can add the login step and the --push option to the buildx command as follows.

build:
  stage: build
  script:
    - docker login -u "$DOCKER_USERNAME" -p "$DOCKER_PASSWORD"
    - docker buildx create --use
    - docker buildx build --push --platform linux/arm/v7,linux/arm64/v8,linux/386,linux/amd64 --tag your-username/multiarch-example:gitlab .

And voila, you can now create a multi arch image each time you make a change in your codebase.