Fall back to another runner when a self-hosted runner is busy or offline (runs-on alternatives)

[karszawa]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Product Feedback

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Self-hosted Runners

Discussion Details

Request: let runs-on name a preferred runner and a fallback, so a job runs on a self-hosted runner when one is free and on a GitHub-hosted (or third-party) runner otherwise.

Today: every label in runs-on must match (AND). There is no way to list alternatives, and a queued job waits for that runner until it comes back or the job expires.

Our workaround: a small job before the real one decides where to run and passes the label through fromJSON(needs.pick.outputs.runs-on). It works, but it adds a job to every workflow, and the runner has to publish its own availability somewhere a workflow can read (we write a repository variable from the runner machine every minute).

Proposal: something like

runs-on:
  prefer: [self-hosted, office-mac]
  wait: 2m
  fallback: macos-15

This would make it practical to put spare in-house machines in front of hosted runners without the risk of jobs stalling when the machine is busy or offline.

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