How do I make the Staging job run in a GitHub Flow?

[rfalanga]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Workflow Configuration

Discussion Details

With several people's help in this forum, I'm learning how to properly use the GitHub Flow pattern. I now have two workflows, one with two jobs (development and staging). And the other one for production. The production workflow works fine, and I know how to use it. The one with the two jobs in it, I've got the development working, but I'm not sure how to make staging work. I'm following suggestions I've gotten earlier when I've asked about GitHub Flow, but I'm not sure how to invoke it. One suggestion was that I should use this if: github.event_name == 'release', but it never is executed when I try to execute it. I looked up the release, but it wasn't of much help to me. Here's the workflow:

name: Single Workflow (for development and staging environments)

# Controls when the workflow will run
on:
  push: # This used to be pull_request 
    branches: [ "main" ]  # Technically, this may be all that's necessary with GitHub Flow
    paths-ignore:
      - '.github/workflows/**'

  workflow_dispatch: # manual

# A workflow run is made up of one or more jobs that can run sequentially or in parallel
jobs:

  development-deploy:
    if: github.event_name == 'push' && github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment: development
      
    # 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@v6

      # Runs a single command using the runners shell
      - name: Print value from ENVIRONMENT
        run: echo ${{ vars.DISPLAY_TEXT }}

  staging-deploy:
    if: github.event_name == 'release'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment: staging
      
    # 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@v6

      # Runs a single command using the runners shell
      - name: Print value from ENVIRONMENT
        run: echo ${{ vars.DISPLAY_TEXT }}

The staging-deploy job never runs, and I am not sure how I should specify a GitHub Action to run it.

[prxcode]

Hi @rfalanga ,

Your staging-deploy job is not running because your workflow never triggers a release event.

Right now you only have:

on:
  push:
  workflow_dispatch:

So github.event_name == 'release' will never be true.

Fix options:

Option 1: Trigger staging manually (simplest)

Use workflow_dispatch and add an input:

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      environment:
        required: true
        type: choice
        options:
          - development
          - staging

Then update your job condition:

staging-deploy:
  if: github.event.inputs.environment == 'staging'

---

Option 2: Actually use GitHub Releases (what your condition expects)

If you want release to work, you must:

• Go to GitHub → Releases → “Draft a new release”
• Publish a release

Then change trigger to:

on:
  release:
    types: [published]

And update condition:

if: github.event_name == 'release'

---

Key point:

release is not triggered by pushes to main—only by creating/publishing a GitHub Release.

• If this helps clarify things, feel free to mark it as the accepted answer

[Rod-at-DOH]

(The rfalanga GitHub account is my personal GitHub account, which I posted this question yesterday. I am replying to your answer using my work GitHub account.)

I need more clarification and I think I need to provide more details, so you'll understand better how my thinking has changed over the last few weeks and how I've gotten to where I am now.

A few weeks ago, I had 3 GitHub workflow files, but I was struggling to make them work using the GitHub Flow pattern. I asked about it and got this answer.

Then someone replied in the same thread and listed 1 YAML file with the development, staging, and production environments in the single .yml file. However, the only way I can see this working is if the on: phrase includes pull_request, push (to main), and release. However, someone else said that the production environment .yml is often put into a separate .yml file. That made sense to me, so I've made a new .yml file to handle the production case. In that file this is how I've specified the on:

on:
  release:  
    types: [published]

I made this change due to another question I asked here and got this answer and later in the same thread this other answer.

Now I am at the place where getting the deployment to the development environment works, and the deployment to the production environment works, but as I've said I'm having problems with deploying to the staging environment. This is what I have in the .yml file for development and staging:

name: Single Workflow (for development and staging environments)

# Controls when the workflow will run
on:
  push: # This used to be pull_request 
    branches: [ "main" ]  # Technically, this may be all that's necessary with GitHub Flow
    paths-ignore:
      - '.github/workflows/**'

  workflow_dispatch: # manual

# A workflow run is made up of one or more jobs that can run sequentially or in parallel
jobs:

  development-deploy:
    if: github.event_name == 'push' && github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment: development
      
    # 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@v6

      # Runs a single command using the runners shell
      - name: Print value from ENVIRONMENT
        run: echo ${{ vars.DISPLAY_TEXT }}

  staging-deploy:
    if: github.event_name == 'release'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment: staging
      
    # 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@v6

      # Runs a single command using the runners shell
      - name: Print value from ENVIRONMENT
        run: echo ${{ vars.DISPLAY_TEXT }}

At this point I don't know how I would differentiate a release targeting only staging, and another release targeting only production.

[rfalanga]

This is rfalanga, which is my personal GitHub account. I want to let you know that I sent the previous post using my work GitHub account Rod-at-DOH.

[Rod-at-DOH]

Hi @prxcode I've done as you suggested, by embellishing the workflow_dispatch with inputs, etc. I had to change the if: on both the development-deploy and staging-deploy jobs, but it works fine, giving me the chance to select which environment I want the Action to run against.

However, I doubt my colleagues will like it. They want something that will allow them to create a PR from a child branch to the main branch and it will run accordingly.