The development experience on Windows for Arm architecture has taken a significant step forward with the recent announcement from GitHub. Starting today, Windows runners on Arm are available for all public repositories, including those from free accounts. This improvement aims to strengthen continuous integration workflows, enabling developers to offer optimized support for Arm-based Windows applications.
With this update, open-source projects can now integrate Windows on Arm targets into their CI pipelines, allowing them to perform build and regression tests similar to those already enjoyed by Intel architectures. This makes it easier for maintainers to work on compatibility and reliability of their applications across a broader spectrum of architectures.
One of the key highlights of this improvement is the expanded support for various architectures, allowing developers to extend their support to Arm devices without the need for additional infrastructure. This is particularly relevant in the current context, marked by the rise of Qualcomm-powered Copilot+ PCs. The inclusion of Arm runners in the pipelines optimizes testing and builds, ensuring that any regressions are detected early.
Access to Arm runners, which include a Windows 11 image for GitHub runners, reflects the platform’s commitment to innovation within the open-source community. To start using these runners, developers simply need to add the “windows-11-arm” target in their GitHub Actions workflow YML file. This addition represents a significant leap forward for projects looking to be inclusive of different architectures, ensuring sustainable performance on multiple platforms.
Developers are encouraged to explore these new capabilities, which aim to expand the reach and compatibility of their projects in an increasingly diverse environment.
Source: MiMub in Spanish