Quickstart for GitHub Actions - GitHub Docs (original) (raw)

Try out the features of GitHub Actions in 5 minutes or less.

Introduction

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 run tests whenever you push a change to your repository, or that deploy merged pull requests to production.

This quickstart guide shows you how to use the user interface of GitHub to add a workflow that demonstrates some of the essential features of GitHub Actions.

To get started with preconfigured workflows, browse through the list of templates in the actions/starter-workflows repository. For more information, see Using workflow templates.

For an overview of GitHub Actions workflows, see About workflows. If you want to learn about the various components that make up GitHub Actions, see Understanding GitHub Actions.

Using workflow templates

GitHub provides preconfigured workflow templates that you can use as-is or customize to create your own workflow. GitHub analyzes your code and shows you workflow templates that might be useful for your repository. For example, if your repository contains Node.js code, you'll see suggestions for Node.js projects.

These workflow templates are designed to help you get up and running quickly, offering a range of configurations such as:

Use these workflows as a starting place to build your custom workflow or use them as-is. You can browse the full list of workflow templates in the actions/starter-workflows repository. For more information, see Using workflow templates.

Prerequisites

This guide assumes that:

Creating your first workflow

  1. In your repository on GitHub, create a workflow file called github-actions-demo.yml in the .github/workflows directory. To do this:
    • If the .github/workflows directory already exists, navigate to that directory on GitHub, click Add file, then click Create new file, and name the file github-actions-demo.yml.
    • If your repository doesn't have a .github/workflows directory, go to the main page of the repository on GitHub, click Add file, then click Create new file, and name the file .github/workflows/github-actions-demo.yml. This creates the .github and workflows directories and the github-actions-demo.yml file in a single step.
      Note
      For GitHub to discover any GitHub Actions workflows in your repository, you must save the workflow files in a directory called .github/workflows.
      You can give the workflow file any name you like, but you must use .yml or .yaml as the file name extension. YAML is a markup language that's commonly used for configuration files.
  2. Copy the following YAML contents into the github-actions-demo.yml file:
    YAML
name: GitHub Actions Demo  
run-name: ${{ github.actor }} is testing out GitHub Actions 🚀  
on: [push]  
jobs:  
  Explore-GitHub-Actions:  
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest  
    steps:  
      - run: echo "🎉 The job was automatically triggered by a ${{ github.event_name }} event."  
      - run: echo "🐧 This job is now running on a ${{ runner.os }} server hosted by GitHub!"  
      - run: echo "🔎 The name of your branch is <span class="katex"><span class="katex-mathml"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><semantics><mrow><mrow><mi>g</mi><mi>i</mi><mi>t</mi><mi>h</mi><mi>u</mi><mi>b</mi><mi mathvariant="normal">.</mi><mi>r</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>f</mi></mrow><mi>a</mi><mi>n</mi><mi>d</mi><mi>y</mi><mi>o</mi><mi>u</mi><mi>r</mi><mi>r</mi><mi>e</mi><mi>p</mi><mi>o</mi><mi>s</mi><mi>i</mi><mi>t</mi><mi>o</mi><mi>r</mi><mi>y</mi><mi>i</mi><mi>s</mi></mrow><annotation encoding="application/x-tex">{{ github.ref }} and your repository is </annotation></semantics></math></span><span class="katex-html" aria-hidden="true"><span class="base"><span class="strut" style="height:0.8889em;vertical-align:-0.1944em;"></span><span class="mord"><span class="mord"><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">g</span><span class="mord mathnormal">i</span><span class="mord mathnormal">t</span><span class="mord mathnormal">h</span><span class="mord mathnormal">u</span><span class="mord mathnormal">b</span><span class="mord">.</span><span class="mord mathnormal">re</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.10764em;">f</span></span></span><span class="mord mathnormal">an</span><span class="mord mathnormal">d</span><span class="mord mathnormal">yo</span><span class="mord mathnormal">u</span><span class="mord mathnormal">rre</span><span class="mord mathnormal">p</span><span class="mord mathnormal">os</span><span class="mord mathnormal">i</span><span class="mord mathnormal">t</span><span class="mord mathnormal" style="margin-right:0.03588em;">ory</span><span class="mord mathnormal">i</span><span class="mord mathnormal">s</span></span></span></span>{{ github.repository }}."  
      - name: Check out repository code  
        uses: actions/checkout@v4  
      - run: echo "💡 The ${{ github.repository }} repository has been cloned to the runner."  
      - run: echo "🖥️ The workflow is now ready to test your code on the runner."  
      - name: List files in the repository  
        run: |  
          ls ${{ github.workspace }}  
      - run: echo "🍏 This job's status is ${{ job.status }}."

At this stage you don't need to understand the details of this workflow. For now, you can just copy and paste the contents into the file. After completing this quickstart guide, you can learn about the syntax of workflow files in About workflows, and for an explanation of GitHub Actions contexts, such as ${{ github.actor }} and ${{ github.event_name }}, see Accessing contextual information about workflow runs. 3. Click Commit changes. 4. In the "Propose changes" dialog, select either the option to commit to the default branch or the option to create a new branch and start a pull request. Then click Commit changes or Propose changes.
Screenshot of the "Propose changes" dialog with the areas mentioned highlighted with an orange outline.

Committing the workflow file to a branch in your repository triggers the push event and runs your workflow.

If you chose to start a pull request, you can continue and create the pull request, but this is not necessary for the purposes of this quickstart because the commit has still been made to a branch and will trigger the new workflow.

Viewing your workflow results

  1. On GitHub, navigate to the main page of the repository.
  2. Under your repository name, click Actions.
    Screenshot of the tabs for the "github/docs" repository. The "Actions" tab is highlighted with an orange outline.
  3. In the left sidebar, click the workflow you want to display, in this example "GitHub Actions Demo."
    Screenshot of the "Actions" page. The name of the example workflow, "GitHub Actions Demo", is highlighted by a dark orange outline.
  4. From the list of workflow runs, click the name of the run you want to see, in this example "USERNAME is testing out GitHub Actions."
  5. In the left sidebar of the workflow run page, under Jobs, click the Explore-GitHub-Actions job.
    Screenshot of the "Workflow run" page. In the left sidebar, the "Explore-GitHub-Actions" job is highlighted with a dark orange outline.
  6. The log shows you how each of the steps was processed. Expand any of the steps to view its details.
    Screenshot of steps run by the workflow.
    For example, you can see the list of files in your repository:
    Screenshot of the "List files in the repository" step expanded to show the log output. The output for the step is highlighted with an orange outline.

The example workflow you just added is triggered each time code is pushed to the branch, and shows you how GitHub Actions can work with the contents of your repository. For an in-depth tutorial, see Understanding GitHub Actions.

Next steps

GitHub Actions can help you automate nearly every aspect of your application development processes. Ready to get started? Here are some helpful resources for taking your next steps with GitHub Actions: