Disclaimer: I wrote this post about six weeks ago but forgot to publish it, I probably should start using scheduling. Hope you enjoy it anyway!
Github Actions is the newest tool for Github that allows for continuous integration and continuous delivery. With this, you could potentially contain your whole project within Github from source control to project management. The whole in an environment where most tools you can use are worked on by the open-source community. You can even build tools seamlessly in that ecosystem. As a matter of fact, within a couple of hours, I was able to put together a couple of Actions I used on a sample project. No need to worry, I will write about that as well.
So a couple of months ago I enrolled in the Github Actions beta because I randomly stumbled onto it. Thought it could be interesting to explore it so I played around with it very sporadically. As in putting an hour here and there every few weeks.
More recently I have been discovering Kubernetes and started exploring the possibility to deploy Kubernetes apps within Github Actions. I started with a tool I found but it didn’t work well for me. Actually didn’t work at all so I ended up researching options and eventually built a first Github Action. Then another one. The first to set up a Kubernetes cluster within a Github Actions build and the other to wait for pods to be up. You will actually get to try these tools when Github Actions goes live next Wednesday.
Building Github actions is pretty straightforward. How straightforward? Well, going through the tutorial and changing it to my needs took a little less than a lunch break. All with without any base knowledge of how creating an action works. You currently can create Javascript or Docker-based actions. I only tried building Javascript actions so far and it proved simple enough that I might stick to that for now. The fact it runs faster than if you have to spin up a docker image makes me believe I would need a pretty serious reason to move away from this method.
Find more details about Github Actions now right here and enjoy trying it out when it comes out November 13.
Indeed. Integration is the way forward. I have been using Github continuously and this update genuinely helped me to streamline my projects.