a GitHub Actions Runner fork

This is a fork of the GitHub Actions Runner, the application that runs a job from a GitHub Actions workflow on a self-hosted machine. See the upstream repository for full documentation.

about this fork

This fork regularly merges upstream actions/runner and changes it into a dedicated multi-repository self-hosted runner:

• one installation can register with, and listen for jobs from, multiple repositories, while running at most one job at a time;
• runner self-update is driven by polling this fork's GitHub releases instead of service-directed update messages;
• runner startup and shutdown hooks run alongside upstream's job hooks; and
• releases are versioned as upstream's major version plus 10 (upstream 2.336.0 corresponds to 12.336.0 here).

Everything else behaves like upstream unless noted below. The one intentional regression: the original single-association configuration mode and its config file shape are not supported, so an existing upstream runner directory must be reconfigured from scratch with this fork.

multi-repository runner

config.sh / config.cmd gains subcommands for managing repository associations:

./config.sh add-repo --url <url> --token <token> [--name ...] [--labels ...]
./config.sh list-repos
./config.sh remove-repo (--id <id> | --url <url> | --name <name>)
./config.sh remove

• add-repo registers one repository association. It accepts the same options as upstream's configure (--unattended, --name, --labels, --runnergroup, --work, --replace, --ephemeral, ...). Running ./config.sh with no subcommand behaves like add-repo. Adding the same URL + runner-name combination twice is rejected.
• list-repos prints one line per association: local id, runner name, and repository URL.
• remove-repo removes exactly one local association (and its stored credential) matched by --id, --url, or --name; if more than one association matches, it refuses and asks for --id.
• remove is always local-only in this fork: it deletes the local configuration files and never unregisters runners on GitHub, regardless of --local. Remove registrations on GitHub via the repository settings UI/API, or one at a time with remove-repo plus manual cleanup.

At runtime the listener creates a session per association and long-polls all of them concurrently. When a job is accepted from one repository, every registration reports Busy until the job finishes, so the same machine is not offered as available to the other repositories. --ephemeral on any association gives the whole runner run-once behavior.

Configuration is stored in the usual .runner and .credentials files, but with a multi-association schema (associations array plus per-association credential entries).

self-update via release polling

The listener ignores service-directed update messages. Instead, if a file named .runner-release-source in the runner root contains an owner/repo slug, the runner polls https://api.github.com/repos/<owner/repo>/releases/latest and self-updates when the release tag is newer than the running version. Release packages built by this fork's release workflow include the file automatically, pointed at the repository that built them; delete the file to disable polling.

• Default poll interval is 1 hour; override in seconds (minimum 60) with GITHUB_ACTIONS_RUNNER_RELEASE_UPDATE_POLL_INTERVAL.
• The download asset must be named actions-runner-<platform>-<version>.tar.gz (.zip on Windows), and its SHA-256 is verified from the release asset digest or from the release notes line naming the asset.

runner startup and shutdown hooks

In addition to upstream's ACTIONS_RUNNER_HOOK_JOB_STARTED / ACTIONS_RUNNER_HOOK_JOB_COMPLETED job hooks, the listener runs:

• ACTIONS_RUNNER_HOOK_RUNNER_STARTED — before the runner starts listening for jobs. If the script fails, the runner exits with an error instead of starting.
• ACTIONS_RUNNER_HOOK_RUNNER_SHUTDOWN — when the listener exits, including after an error.

Set each variable to the path of a script; the shell is chosen the same way as for job hooks (.sh via bash/sh, .ps1 via pwsh/powershell). These hooks run in the listener process outside of any job, so their output goes to the runner terminal and diagnostic log rather than to a workflow step.

building

Same as upstream:

cd src
./dev.sh layout   # dev.cmd on Windows; full build into {root}/_layout

./dev.sh build refreshes an existing layout and ./dev.sh test runs the tests. The dev script bootstraps the required .NET SDK itself.

license

MIT, same as upstream (LICENSE).