What is the benifit of gitlab-ci-local over gitlab-runner exec?

[Vad1mo]

So far, I was using gitlab-runner so far, Now that I discovered gitlab-ci-local I wonder what benifits and problems it solves over gitlab-runner?

gitlab-runner exec docker my-job-name

[firecow]

gitlab-runner exec is not capable of parsing extends, merging includes or expanding !reference [.hidden, script], the moment you start having "complex" ci yaml, gitlab-runner exec isn't of much help.

gitlab-ci-local makes it possible to pass custom variables to your job, making it easier to mimic/modify gitlab's ci/cd variables.

gitlab-ci-local will copy artifacts to your local checkout, so that your IDE can index stuff like node_modules or php vendor folders to provide code autocompletion n' other help.

gitlab-ci-local can execute an entire pipeline or a subset of jobs (--needs, --only-needs), whereas gitlab-runner exec only runs a single job.

Also, I'm pretty sure gitlab said gitlab-runner exec will be phased out.