Setup GitLab CI Runner with Docker Executor on Windows 10/11

If you are trying to use the GitLab.com shared runners, you may run out of minutes. Or you may have issues verifying your account. So, in this tutorial, I will show you how you can install your own GitLab Runner on your Windows 10 or Windows 11 machine.

Here is an overview of what we will do in this tutorial:

• install Git & Docker
• download & install the GitLab Runner
• configure the GitLab Runner to work with gitlab.com

If everything runs smooth, you should have this up and running in about 20–30 minutes.

This is a fully manual process that is ideal for beginners wanting to get started with GitLab CI. This is NOT a production-ready setup and should NOT be used as such.

Step 1— Installing Git

The GitLab Runner requires Git to run.

Open any terminal and check if you already have Git installed by typing:

git --version

If you are getting back an error message, you need to install Git. I would anyway recommend installing/updating Git anyway.

The error in this image shows that Git is not present on this system.