Pipelines: Increase the Build Container Memory above 1024mb

Jan Hadl

I am constantly running into the memory limit of the build container, which is, according to the documentation, 1024mb. It is nice that I have 4gb in total (that is, including all the used services) at my disposal, but in my case, I do not need any external services and would rather use the entire 4gb for the build container.

Is there any configuration option that I can use to do so? Even after extensive searching and trial&error, I can't seem to make the build container use more than 1024mb, which is unfortunate.

Philip Hodder

Hi Jan,

By default, the build container has 4GB of memory.

If you add a service container, each will take 1GB of the total 4GB memory.

e.g. 2 service containers. Each service container will have 1GB and the build container will have 2GB of memory.

If you'd like to alter the memory usage of your containers, you have two options:

• Configure (and reduce) the memory your service containers are using: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/use-services-and-databases-in-bitbucket-pipelines-874786688.html
• Double the total memory of your build, from 4GB to 8GB total. The build container will take the new memory until more services are added. https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/configure-bitbucket-pipelines-yml-792298910.html#Configurebitbucket-pipelines.yml-ci_sizesize

An example using both features:

pipelines:
  default:
    - step:
        size: 2x # Total memory is 8GB
        services:
          - my-service-container # Will consume 512MB
        script: 
          # The build container will have 7.5GB remaining.
          - echo "Build container memory usage in megabytes:" && echo $((`cat /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes | awk '{print $1}'`/1048576))

definitions:
  services:
    my-service-container:
      image: a-docker-image:tag
      memory: 512

Thanks,

Phil