Atlassian has announced ARM-based Linux runners for its Bitbucket Pipelines cloud service, allowing developers to build software artefacts and container images for ARM-based systems. The new feature is available exclusively to Standard and Premium plan customers.
Developers are now able to configure builds for ARM in their bitbucket-pipelines.yml configuration file, with the option of configuring the ARM runtime either globally or for individual build steps. This is done through ARM-compatible container images, with Atlassian’s own default image for building software supporting ARM as of version 4.
Atlassian has used the new ARM pipelines in Bitbucket Cloud in their new runtime for over six months before releasing publically, to ensure stability and performance. Launched in September 2024, this new runtime is claimed to be eight times faster, and also supports new 4x and 8x sizings. These have 8 vCPUs and 16Gb RAM, and 16 vCPUs and 32Gb RAM respectively. The release of ARM builds for BitBucket Cloud addresses long-standing feedback on the Atlassian forums, with administrators having used AWS ARM-based Graviton instances for a number of years but without dedicated support for ARM in the build process.
Atlassian is the latest vendor of CI/CD software to support ARM builds. GitHub Actions has supported ARM-based runners since 2021, and has been offering 64-bit ARM runners on both Ubuntu Linux and Windows since 2024. CircleCI provides ARM-based machine runner support, as does GitLab with their ARM offerings on their SaaS products.
The major cloud providers have also been instrumental in the trend toward providing builds for the ARM architecture. Amazon Web Services’ CodeBuild supports ARM-based builds, and provides popular ARM hosting through their Graviton instances. These instances are considered more cost-effective than than the 64-bit x86 architecture. Google Cloud Build offers similar capabilities, and Microsoft Azure Pipelines also has ARM templates.
For organizations still running their own on-premise CI/CD infrastructure, ARM support has become increasingly accessible. Self-hosted Jenkins instances can have ARM runners using Kubernetes or Docker plugins. Self-hosted GitLab and TeamCity instances can have ARM runners, allowing organisations to leverage this platform without having to move to the cloud.
ARM builds are now available for developers on an Atlassian Bitbucket Standard or Premium plan.
