GitHub Actions First Look

Learn how to use GitHub Actions to automate many common developer tasks. Discover how to build workflows triggered by events, develop a CI/CD pipeline, and create custom actions.

Introduction

• Automating with GitHub Actions
• What you should know
• Exercise files
• Working with YAML files
• What's new in this update

1. Your First Action

• Your first action
• Workflow and action attributes

2. Connecting Actions with Workflows

• Create a workflow
• Add jobs and steps to a workflow
• Add actions to a workflow
• Run a workflow
• Add dependencies between actions
• Add conditions to a workflow
• Workflow and action limitations
• Challenge: Develop a complex workflow
• Solution: Develop a complex workflow

3. Using Actions

• Use an action from the Marketplace
• Use an action from a repository
• Passing arguments to an action
• Using environment variables
• Using secrets
• Using artifacts
• Manage pull requests
• Challenge: Develop a workflow that creates an artifact
• Solution: Develop a workflow that creates an artifact

4. Developing a CI/CD Workflow

• Plan your CI/CD pipeline
• Linting and unit tests
• Building and managing artifacts
• Testing
• Deploying
• Add a workflow status badge
• Challenge: Develop a CI/CD pipeline for a Python script
• Solution: Develop a CI/CD pipeline for a Python script

5. Building Custom Actions

• Plan a custom action
• Your custom action objective
• Dockerfile review
• Add a Dockerfile
• Add an entry-point script
• Use runtime environment resources
• Test an action locally
• Complete the entry-point script
• Add a metadata file
• Add a README file
• Deploy a custom action
• Publish an action to the Marketplace
• Challenge: Create a custom action
• Solution: Create a custom action

Conclusion

• Additional resources for more GitHub Actions