Arch Linux container images

This repository builds and publishes minimal Arch Linux container images that are tuned for use as build environments. Multi-architecture builds are supported for both linux/amd64 and linux/arm64 targets.

Image overview

• archlinux:base – x86_64 image derived from the upstream archlinux:base image and extended with tooling such as base-devel, git, git-lfs, sudo, pacman-contrib, rsync, gnupg, jq, and zstd.
• archlinuxarm:base – aarch64 image bootstrapped from the official Arch Linux ARM root filesystem and provisioned with the same toolchain as the x86_64 variant.

When the GitHub Actions workflow runs in this repository, both images are pushed to GitHub Container Registry under ghcr.io/existemi/archlinux:base and ghcr.io/existemi/archlinuxarm:base.

Quick start

# Pull the amd64 image
docker pull ghcr.io/existemi/archlinux:base

# Pull the arm64 image (requires an arm64 host or emulation)
docker pull ghcr.io/existemi/archlinuxarm:base

# Run a shell using the amd64 image
docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/existemi/archlinux:base bash

Both images include the Arch package signing keys and update their package metadata during the build, so pacman is ready for immediate use.

Building locally

The repo ships with scripts/build.sh, a wrapper around docker buildx that produces multi-architecture images:

./scripts/build.sh            # build both x86_64 and aarch64 variants
./scripts/build.sh x86_64     # build only the amd64 image
./scripts/build.sh aarch64    # build only the arm64 image

The script expects Docker Buildx to be available. It loads the resulting image into the local Docker engine by default. To control the produced tags, set the following environment variables before invoking the script:

• ARCH_BUILD_IMAGE_X86_64
• ARCH_BUILD_IMAGE_AARCH64
• ARCH_BUILD_GHCR_NAMESPACE

When ARCH_BUILD_GHCR_NAMESPACE is set (for example to ghcr.io/existemi), the script automatically tags and pushes the images to that registry.

Continuous integration

The workflow defined in .github/workflows/build.yml:

• builds both architectures on pushes to main, scheduled runs, and manual dispatches;
• sets up QEMU and Buildx to produce multi-architecture images; and
• pushes the images to GitHub Container Registry using the repository owner as the namespace.

Licensing

See LICENSE and NOTICE for details on the licensing of this repository and the artifacts it produces.