Common GitHub Workflow Jobs

Common job configuration snippets taken from GitHub workflows, showing options typically used with GitHub actions.

Basic workflow information

Echo information regarding the triggering of the workflow, to help diagnose issues should they arise

Git Checkout Action

jobs:
  workflow:
    name: workflow-name
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - run: echo "🚀 Job automatically triggered by ${{ github.event_name }}"
      - run: echo "🐧 Job running on ${{ runner.os }} server"
      - run: echo "🐙 Using ${{ github.ref }} branch from ${{ github.repository }} repository"

Add a summary of the workflow at the end of the configuration.

      # Summary and status
      - run: echo "🎨 Workflow name completed"
      - run: echo "🍏 Job status is ${{ job.status }}."

Git Checkout

Check-out the project from version control, fetching the whole history with fetch-depth: 0. Set fetch-depth: to 1 (or remove the option) to checkout the single commit for the ref/SHA that triggered the workflow

Echo the GitHub Repository that was cloned to the workflow log, to support debugging efforts.

Git Checkout Action

      # Git Checkout
      - name: Checkout Code
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          token: "${{ secrets.PAT || secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}"
          fetch-depth: 0   # fetch all history
      - run: echo "🐙 ${{ github.repository }} repository was cloned to the runner."

Sparse Checkout

Using git sparse-checkout can save signficant time by checking out a sub-set of files, especially from a large repository with thousands of commits.

git sparse-checkout always checks out all files in the root of the repository, so specify only the additional files and directories required.

Git Sparse Checkout Action

      # Git Checkout
      - name: Checkout Code
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          token: "${{ secrets.PAT || secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}"
          fetch-depth: 0   # fetch all history
          sparse-checkout: |
            docs
            overrides
      - run: echo "🐙 ${{ github.repository }} repository was cloned to the runner."

Pull Request first interaction

first-interaction returning Bad Credentials error

Add messages to a contributor's first issue or pull request to a repository.

In this example, the contributing guide is added as a comment to the issue or pull request.

First Interaction Action

      # Message on first interaction
      - name: First interaction
        uses: actions/first-interaction@v1.1.1
        with:
          # Token for the repository
          repo-token: "{{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}"
          # Comment to post on an individual's first issue
          issue-message: "[Practicalli Contributing Guide](https://practical.li/spacemacs/introduction/contributing/)"
          # Comment to post on an individual's first pull request
          pr-message: "[Practicalli Contributing Guide](https://practical.li/spacemacs/introduction/contributing/)"