It takes time to master highly specialized and complex IT domains like software development and automation. But with time at a premium, you would often be required to deliver projects quickly. So, what do you do in that case? You look for simple solutions, right.

If you are tired of searching for easy-to-execute and straightforward steps to run the Github Actions Workflow, this post is for you. Because time is at a premium, we won't waste any more of it. Let's dive straight into the discussion.

Before we start, let's quickly look at a hypothetical Github Actions Workflow command screen that we will use as an illustration to help you better understand the steps involved.

           go-version: '1.9.3' # The Go version to download (if necessary) and use.

           OUTPUT=$(go run main.go | tail -1) &&

           echo "::set-output name=OUTPUT::$OUTPUT"

         if: steps.main.outputs.OUTPUT == 0

           cd ./mainRepository/projectA &&

         if: steps.main.outputs.OUTPUT == 1

           cd ./mainRepository/projectB &&

First things first. Just like there must be a car to learn how to drive a car, there must be a workflow to learn how to run a workflow.

In the example above, we have first defined a workflow that runs on a 'push' event. We have divided it into Project A and Project B and assigned it to the latest version of an Ubuntu container. Because our main program only calculates a value equal to 0 or 1, we can also call it a flip-coin program. If the toss of the coin yields 0, we run Project A. If the coin yields 1, we run Project B. Simple, isn't it?

   s1 := rand.NewSource(time.Now().UnixNano())

The only command inside Project A and B is the 'Print' command, indicating which routine is currently being run.

Alright. We now have the car. It is time now to understand the steps involved in driving it.

The first step is to check the main repository in the ./mainRepository folder and then install the ‘Go-version 1.9.3’ to run the main program.

The next step is to run the main repository. To do so, we first assign it the ID 'main' that will help us retrieve the output later. The other half of this step involves defining the output of the program. Once done, our next action is to let Github Actions know the OUTPUT variable will be the output obtained by running the main repository.

The last step is to define an ‘if’ statement to determine which project to run based on the value or output obtained from our flip-coin program. You can do so by linking the string 'steps. {step_name}.outputs.{step_output}'.

In this post we can talk about steps to run the Github Actions Workflow, 

'If' Statements on Github Actions

GitHub, Inc. is a provider of Internet hosting for software development and version control using Git. It offers the distributed version control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git, plus its own features. It provides access control and several collaboration features such as bug tracking, feature requests, task management, continuous integration, and wikis for every project. Headquartered in California, it has been a subsidiary of Microsoft since 2018.

GitHub Actions actives engineer's to active Agile program development method to deliver results to the users in the shortest possible time without compromising everything on software quality, standards, processes, and security aspects. Actions empower developers to automate the software development lifecycle and allows customization of the workflow wherever needed while it gets executed.

Actions facilitate Continuous Integration and Continuous delivery of software from GitHub repository which ensures code under development is moved to production within a short time cycle so that users get benefitted most by improved accuracy in the application delivery, reduction in the development cost, and improvement in the revenue generation for the organization.

Several components in Actions helps in configuring a development life cycle including testing of software till its deployment.  Some of the major components are:

Workflows can be triggered or configured to run whenever an event occurs. An event is a specified activity that can happen as part of Actions or scheduled at a particular time within GitHub or happen outside of GitHub.

Type of events that triggers Workflow execution

Upon the occurrence of a single event. Example – Whenever code is moved into any part of the GitHub repository

Upon the occurrence of Multiple events e.g. Whenever one of the listed events like Code push or Code Pull occurs.

Upon the occurrence of an event with a specific activity type. e.g. Workflow can be triggered whenever code is pushed in the main branch (Activity type) or code is released under created category (Activity type).

At a particular time as a scheduled event. g. Cronjob can be run in the backend which will wake up at a scheduled time, trigger workflow, set up the next wake up time, and go to sleep till that time.

Workflow is a set of procedures that are logically connected and made available in the GitHub repository. As described above these workflows are triggered by various events. Workflow is packaged as YAML files and users can create, test and deploy these workflows as a project.

A typical workflow contains various Jobs which have several steps and each step has an action to get the results. Some of the Workflow may be simple and some may be complex that stores sensitive information. Such data like certificates/passwords will use stored as secrets in the workflow as an environment variable and used as parameter during the retrieval of information.

GitHub simplifies the creation of workflows by providing them a master template workflow for users to customize and create their workflow as per the requirement.

Jobs that run as part of a workflow consists of a set of several steps. These steps are getting executed in the same runner to share data among steps. Normally the jobs in the workflow are executed as parallel operations unless there are dependencies between jobs. There could be a dependent job whose execution can start only upon completion of another job. In that case, these two jobs cannot run in a parallel model and they will have to go in a serial mode and it has to be configured in actions as serial jobs.

Steps are part of a Job in GitHub Actions. These steps execute commands, tasks setup, actions defined in the repository. A step may contain an action or a shell command. But action is run as a step in a repository and it is executed as a process in the runner environment with needed resources like file system and workspace. Since each step is considered as its process GitHub does not preserve the changes to environment variables.

Action can be a discrete task or custom codes to interact with repository objects. Actions can be combined into steps and in turn into jobs as part of a workflow. Interfaces available within GitHub or third-party interfaces (API) can be used as part of custom code in action. Actions can run either on machines or through docker containers depending on the need.

It’s a server that hosts the application in GitHub Actions that performs assigned tasks. Users can use the runners provided by GitHub or they can have their runners.  Runners execute a job at a time and report back the results to GitHub.

To create a sample workflow all a user need is just a GitHub repository. A directory   .github/workflows should be created if it is not already available.

A file github-actions-sample .yml with the following contents can be created in the workflows folder.

run: echo “ A Sample Workflow in GitHub Actions – Part I “

run: echo “ Event $ { { github.event_name } } is triggering this step “

run: echo “ Server $ { { runner.os } } in GitHub hosts this test application”

run: echo “ A Sample Workflow in GitHub Actions – Part II  “

run: echo “ Repository name is $ { { github.repository } } “

The above code should be committed to the GitHub repository.

Name: github_actions_sample is the name of the workflow and it will appear in the GitHub actions repository

On:      Pull – This code gets executed whenever some objects are pulled from GitHub

Jobs:    Test-GitHub-Actions-job1  and Test-GitHub-Actions-job2 and the steps are defined in

Whenever some users try to pull out any objects from the repository the above code as part of the will get executed. This code displays the Event name, server name, and repository name.

Overall GitHub Actions simplifies the code management activities and shrinks the development time by automating several processes in the software development life cycle.

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