if I remember correctly CircleCI is the only CI-provider that would let you run their pipelines/actions locally in a Docker container. That worked really well for me, quick feedback loop without creating commits.
I agree with the other comments that CircleCI is my high-bar for "how can a sane person run the build locally?" because I also agree with the other comments that "act" is handy, but only for the most trivial of hello-world builds, and `gitlab-runner exec` is a cruel joke
[0] - https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/quick_start/#ensure-you-have-r...
[1] - https://medium.com/@umutuluer/how-to-test-gitlab-ci-locally-...