Add Windows 11 arm64 to standard and full CI test matrix

[currantw]

Summary

The Windows 11 arm64 runner (windows-11-arm) is defined in .github/json_matrices/os-matrix.json but has an empty profiles array, meaning it never runs in any CI profile. This leaves the aarch64-pc-windows-msvc target completely untested.

Current state

{
    "OS": "windows",
    "NAMED_OS": "windows",
    "RUNNER": "windows-11-arm",
    "ARCH": "arm64",
    "TARGET": "aarch64-pc-windows-msvc",
    "profiles": []
}

Proposed change

Add standard and full to the profiles array:

{
    "OS": "windows",
    "NAMED_OS": "windows",
    "RUNNER": "windows-11-arm",
    "ARCH": "arm64",
    "TARGET": "aarch64-pc-windows-msvc",
    "profiles": ["standard", "full"]
}

Additional Information

• GitHub announced Windows on Arm runner availability for all public repos in April 2025 (public preview).

[currantw]

Why integration tests cannot run on GitHub's windows-11-arm runners

Since Valkey has no native Windows build, our CI relies on WSL to run Valkey on Windows (in fact, this is the recommended approach for running Valkey on Windows). However, WSL needs nested virtualization, which are not supported by GitHub's windows-11-arm runners. As a result, integration tests cannot run on this platform.

Background: how Windows x64 runners run Valkey

On the existing windows-2025 (x64) runners, Valkey is built from source and run inside WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). The CI uses the Vampire/setup-wsl action to install an Ubuntu distribution, then compiles and runs Valkey natively within that Linux environment.

Root cause: WSL2 is unavailable on windows-11-arm runners

WSL2 requires Hyper-V, and Hyper-V requires nested virtualization. GitHub-hosted runners are themselves virtual machines, and the windows-11-arm runners do not support nested virtualization. This means WSL2 cannot be installed or used.

The Arm Hyper-V install guide states that "You must enable Hyper-V on a physical computer. It cannot be enabled on a virtual machine such as an Azure Arm instance running Windows 11."

On physical ARM hardware (e.g., Snapdragon laptops), Hyper-V and WSL2 work normally. The x64 Windows runners (windows-2025) also support nested virtualization, which is why WSL2 functions there. The limitation is specific to GitHub's ARM runner VMs.

Valkey does not have native Windows builds

Valkey is a Linux-native application that relies on POSIX APIs like fork(). Without WSL, there is no way to run Valkey on these runners.

What works on windows-11-arm

• Building the Rust native library (cargo build --target aarch64-pc-windows-msvc)
• Building the .NET solution
• Running unit tests (no server dependency)