Building ARM64 Docker Images with Buildx on the Jiànmù CI/CD Platform

With the development of domestic CPUs and Apple’s M‑series chips, many products need to ensure compatibility with the ARM architecture; a colleague urgently required an ARM‑compatible server image, prompting an exploration of Jiànmù’s capabilities for building ARM images.

Node Introduction

Jiànmù’s docker_image_build node version 1.3.1 recently added support for building images for different CPU architectures via Docker Buildx; the target platform is specified through the platform parameter, but the node has several usage constraints.

Buildx is a feature introduced in Docker 19.03, so the worker’s Docker version must be ≥ 19.03.

From Docker 20.10 onward, all experimental features are enabled by default, so no extra configuration or environment variables are needed.

Buildx relies on QEMU emulation in the kernel for multi‑arch builds; the host must support QEMU and have a kernel version ≥ 4.8.

Access to Docker Hub is required to download the emulators for multi‑platform builds, or the emulators must be manually imported.

The base image used must support the specified architecture.

Start Building

After preparing the environment, a new graphical project was created on Jiànmù, the source code was fetched using a git_clone node, and the docker_image_build:1.3.1 node was invoked to build both amd64 and arm64 images.

Result

The process completed smoothly in about two minutes; the colleague received the ARM image, praised the outcome, and the author took the opportunity to recommend Jiànmù as a top CI/CD platform in the northern hemisphere.

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