How to publish a multi-arch Docker manifest to ECR with aws-ecr-push-image in one Bitbucket step?

[Victor Micó Biosca]

Hi everyone,

We are using Bitbucket Cloud Pipelines and the pipe atlassian/aws-ecr-push-image:2.6.0 to push Docker images to ECR.

Our use case:

• CI runner is amd64
• Production edge devices are arm64
• We want to publish one single tag that contains a multi-architecture manifest, so Docker pull resolves automatically by platform

Current limitation we see:

• aws-ecr-push-image pushes a single image/tag, but does not seem to support creating/pushing a multi-arch manifest list in one step

Today we are using a workaround with docker buildx before the pipe, and then pushing architecture-specific tags, but we would like native support directly in the pipe.

Questions:

1. Is multi-architecture manifest push currently supported by aws-ecr-push-image?
2. If not, is there a recommended Atlassian-supported pattern to keep using the pipe and still publish one multi-arch tag?
3. Is this feature on the roadmap?

Thanks!

[Syahrul · Accepted solution]

Hey @Victor Micó Biosca 

Welcome to the community.

Please find the following answer to your questions:

1. Is multi-architecture manifest push currently supported by aws-ecr-push-image?

No, the atlassian/aws-ecr-push-image pipe still only pushes a single image/tag that exists in the local Docker daemon. It does not have a built-in function to aggregate multiple images into a manifest list and push them as one tag.

2. Recommended Atlassian-supported pattern

Since Bitbucket now supports both AMD64 and ARM64 runners natively in the cloud, the recommended pattern is to build the images on their respective native architectures and then use a final step to create the manifest.

Recommended Workflow:

1. Parallel Steps: Run two parallel steps—one on an amd64 runner and one on an arm64 runner.
2. Push Architecture-Specific Tags: In each step, build and push the image to ECR with an architecture-specific tag (e.g., :latest-amd64 and :latest-arm64).
3. Manifest Step: Use a final step (on either runner) to create and push the multi-arch manifest using docker manifest.

Example: 

• Announcing ARM builds in cloud for Bitbucket Pipelines 
• Building multi-architecture docker images with Bitbucket Pipelines 

3. Roadmap Status

With the release of ARM runners, the primary blocker for multi-arch workflows (the need for slow emulation) has been addressed. While there isn't a specific "one-click" pipe for manifests currently on the public roadmap, the native support for ARM runners is the intended solution for these use cases.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Syahrul