GitHub Actions Fundamentals

GitHub Actions makes it easy to automate all your software workflows, right from GitHub.

Core Concepts

• Workflows: Automated processes defined in a YAML file in the .github/workflows directory.
• Events: Triggers that run workflows (e.g., push, pull_request).
• Jobs: A set of steps that execute on the same runner.
• Steps: Individual tasks that can run commands or actions.
• Actions: Standalone commands that are combined into steps to create a job.
• Runners: Servers that run your workflows when they’re triggered.

Example Workflow

name: CI
on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: Run a one-line script
      run: echo Hello, world!

Managing Secrets

GitHub provides encrypted secrets to store sensitive information like API keys and tokens. These can be accessed in workflows using the ${{ secrets.SECRET_NAME }} syntax.