GitHub Actions Overview

GitHub Actions is a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform that allows you to automate your build, test, and deployment pipeline. You can create workflows that build and test every pull request to your repository, or deploy merged pull requests to production.

Components of a GitHub action

Workflow

A workflow is a job that will run one or more jobs. Tyey are written as YAML files stored in the GH repositiory in the .github/workflows folder. You can have multiple workflow files.

Event

A specific trigger that runs the workflow. For example, a pull-request can trigger a workflow.

Job

A job is the steps defined within the workflow and can be either a shell script or an action. They can run in parallel of each other or have dependencies.'

Action

If you have complex tasks that are repetative you can define then as an action to minimise your code repetition.

Runner

This is where the action runs from. It’s a server that is freshly provisioned for each workflow.

References

Overview