Usage without actions/jekyll-build-pages

[letmaik]

I'm assuming the goal for actions/deploy-pages is to provide a generic way to deploy a zipped-up dump of a website following some conventions on artifact naming and the contents of the artifact.

Looking at the artifacts, it seems like the convention currently is:

• Artifact name: "github-pages"
• Artifact content: single tar file named artifact.tar that contains the website files

Two questions:

1. Why the extra tar file? Wouldn't it be simpler to just have the website files directly in the artifact so that actions/upload-artifact can be used directly on a folder?
2. Will these conventions change and should people wait before using actions/deploy-pages without actions/jekyll-build-pages?

[YiMysty]

👋 @letmaik
To answer your questions

1. Why the extra tar file? Wouldn't it be simpler to just have the website files directly in the artifact so that actions/upload-artifact can be used directly on a folder?

There are some known issues for upload-artifact actions. Please check https://github.com/actions/upload-artifact#zipped-artifact-downloads for more details.

2. Will these conventions change and should people wait before using actions/deploy-pages without actions/jekyll-build-pages?

We are going to start with "BYOW" (bring your own workflow) feature soon. In the mean time, feel free to check #9 to integrate your own workflow.

[letmaik]

@YiMysty Thanks!

There are some known issues for upload-artifact actions. Please check https://github.com/actions/upload-artifact#zipped-artifact-downloads for more details.

The link just describes the behavior that downloading gives you a zip file. What issues are you referring to?

[YiMysty]

👋 @letmaik pages backend gonna download the uploaded artifact, and then do the deployment.

If file permissions and case sensitivity are required, you can tar all of your files together before artifact upload. Post download, the tar file will maintain file permissions and case sensitivity:

tar content is the recommended way to avoid this situation.

[letmaik]

I think file permissions don't matter, so this is just about case sensitivity. Shame that artifacts have this behavior, but ok. Maybe there will be some action that can tar things up. I'd hate to see variations of the tar command in each repo... especially since it will vary across operating systems.

[yoannchaudet]

When we officially support custom workflow for deploying Pages, we will very much likely update the deploy-pages action (this repo!) to accept a folder as an optional input and do all the tar + upload artifact magic underneath.

[letmaik]

@yoannchaudet Sounds great! I'll leave it to you to close this issue or leave it open. I got all my answers :)

[letmaik]

I tried this out now but couldn't get it to work yet.

https://github.com/letmaik/t_cose/runs/5545277167?check_suite_focus=true

Failed to create deployment for 10b883b911e60234044520c8e7ac9b7789b63d37.
{"message":"Not Found","documentation_url":"https://docs.github.com/rest/reference/repos#create-a-github-pages-deployment"}

https://github.com/letmaik/t_cose/blob/10b883b911e60234044520c8e7ac9b7789b63d37/.github/workflows/pages.yml#L12-L46

[YiMysty]

I tried this out now but couldn't get it to work yet.

https://github.com/letmaik/t_cose/runs/5545277167?check_suite_focus=true

Failed to create deployment for 10b883b911e60234044520c8e7ac9b7789b63d37.
{"message":"Not Found","documentation_url":"https://docs.github.com/rest/reference/repos#create-a-github-pages-deployment"}

https://github.com/letmaik/t_cose/blob/10b883b911e60234044520c8e7ac9b7789b63d37/.github/workflows/pages.yml#L12-L46

👋 you need to enable GitHub pages first before you can use this action. e.g. go to settings page and click enable pages.

[letmaik]

Hm, I only see the following to enable it, but then it builds/deploys automatically from the selected branch. Wouldn't this conflict with manually calling actions/deploy-pages? I guess the UI has to be changed first?

[letmaik]

One more note/question: I think currently the deploy permission is kind of linked to a branch, but what I usually do is deploy project docs whenever I release a new version, and I usually trigger that by pushing a git tag which builds and tests the code, and then generates the docs and eventually pushes it to gh-pages. Will actions/deploy-pages also support running from git tags?

[YiMysty]

Hm, I only see the following to enable it, but then it builds/deploys automatically from the selected branch. Wouldn't this conflict with manually calling actions/deploy-pages? I guess the UI has to be changed first?

👋 We will fix the UX (to tie with environment instead of branch) when we start to work on customize workflow feature. For now you could enable the pages for a non-related branch. (Just for enable pages.)

Go to the Environments section under settings tab, and edit github-pages environment. change the deployment branches to protected branches

Now you would be able to do the deployment for the branch you want the workflow to run :)

One more note/question: I think currently the deploy permission is kind of linked to a branch, but what I usually do is deploy project docs whenever I release a new version, and I usually trigger that by pushing a git tag which builds and tests the code, and then generates the docs and eventually pushes it to gh-pages. Will actions/deploy-pages also support running from git tags?

for the customize workflow feature, we will design ux to allow trigger from workflow directly. At that case, you would be able to define your own trigger to run deploy-pages

[SamStephens]

@YiMisty thanks for the explanations you've provided here. I've used this to create a parallel to actions/jekyll-build-pages, SamStephens/nanoc-build-pages, for using nanoc to build Github pages.

[yoannchaudet]

Here is something new!

https://github.blog/changelog/2022-07-27-github-pages-custom-github-actions-workflows-beta/

The README file on this repo contains further information too. Closing here but let us know if you have further questions.