setup.md

Github Actions Katas

This series of katas will go through the basic steps in github actions, making you able to make CI builds in the end.

Learning Goals

• Creating an instance of the template repository
• Creating a workflow file seeing Github Actions in action

Exercise

Overview

In this exercise we are creating your own instance of this templated repository, and creating a workflow.

💡 If you want to clone this down on your machine, you need to have git set up there. Here are the commands to set it up

You need to provide your email and name to git with the following commands.

git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
git config --global user.name "Your Name"

When you do a git clone, then you will be asked for your username and password. If you want to avoid that, you can set up an ssh key. Here is a guide on how to do that. It will take you 5-10 minutes though, so if you are in a hurry, just use the username and password.

Tasks

Creating a repository

• Go to Code tab of this repository and click Use this template

• Select your GitHub user as the owner and name the repository. Leave the repo public to have unlimited action minutes.

💡 From this point forward, all actions should be performed in the repository you just created, not the template repository

Creating the workflow

As a general rule, all your workflow files will be located in the .github/workflows folder.

• Click on the Actions tab and click New workflow

• Click on the "setup the workflow yourself" link

• The file .github/workflows/main.yaml should have the following workflow:

# This is a basic workflow to help you get started with Actions

name: CI

# Controls when the workflow will run
on:
  # Triggers the workflow on push or pull request events but only for the "main" branch
  push:
    branches: [ "main" ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ "main" ]

  # Allows you to run this workflow manually from the Actions tab
  workflow_dispatch:

# A workflow run is made up of one or more jobs that can run sequentially or in parallel
jobs:
  # This workflow contains a single job called "build"
  build:
    # The type of runner that the job will run on
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    # Steps represent a sequence of tasks that will be executed as part of the job
    steps:
      # Checks-out your repository under $GITHUB_WORKSPACE, so your job can access it
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      # Runs a single command using the runners shell
      - name: Run a one-line script
        run: echo Hello, world!

      # Runs a set of commands using the runners shell
      - name: Run a multi-line script
        run: |
          echo Add other actions to build,
          echo test, and deploy your project.

• click Commit changes and commit to the main branch
• Go to the Actions tab and see the workflow running
• Click on the workflow and see the output of the workflow

Summary

Congratulations! You have now created your first workflow! It does not do much, but in the next exercise we will start building on it.