Runners builds being queued

Summary

Runners builds will sometimes be in a "queued" state, taking a while to actually start building.

Environment

This only affects Bitbucket Pipelines Runners builds.

Diagnosis

When running builds in Pipelines Runners, you will sometimes see that the build is in a "queued" state.

Cause

The reason why builds go into the "Queued" state is because each Runner can only execute a single at any given time, it cannot run multiple steps at the same time. This is true for both repository and workspace Runners.

If your build goes into a Queued state, it means that all Runners are busy executing another build step.

Solution

There are a few ways to resolve this, depending on the resources available to your team.

• If you are able to allocate additional resources to Runners, you can add a new repository or workspace Runner.

• If you are unable to add any additional resources to Runners, then you can also just wait while the previous build executes.

Once it's done, if no other build step was queued for execution earlier, and if your build step does not exceed the 2.5 hours queue time, it will run the step normally once the resource is free.