Building CI Workflows with GitHub Actions

1. Introduction

Continuous Integration (CI) is a development practice where developers integrate code into a shared repository frequently. GitHub Actions provides a flexible and customizable way to automate CI workflows directly from your GitHub repository.

2. Key Concepts

3. Workflow Structure

A basic workflow file structure looks like this:

name: CI Workflow

on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: '14'

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm install

      - name: Run tests
        run: npm test
        

This YAML file defines a workflow named "CI Workflow" that runs on every push or pull request to the repository.

4. Example Workflow

The following example demonstrates a simple CI workflow for a Node.js application:

name: Node.js CI

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ main ]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - name: Checkout repository
      uses: actions/checkout@v2

    - name: Set up Node.js
      uses: actions/setup-node@v2
      with:
        node-version: '16'

    - name: Install dependencies
      run: npm install

    - name: Run tests
      run: npm test

    - name: Build project
      run: npm run build
        

5. Best Practices

• Use caching to speed up dependency installation.
• Use matrix builds to test against multiple environments.
• Keep workflows modular by splitting them into reusable actions.
• Use secrets for sensitive information.

6. FAQ