Workflows

Topics

Blog

Build and release assets

Check links

Deno

Deploy to GitHub Pages

Deploy to Netlify

Email

Go

Jekyll

Linting

MkDocs

Node.js

Python

Ruby

Rust

Slack

Tweet

mdBook

Pages

• Basic

  Minimal workflows for GH Actions to get you started

• Cache

  Cache artifacts like dependencies and build outputs to improve workflow execution time

• Checkout
• Commit

  How to commit and push files during the CI flow

• Create Pull Request
• Hugo
• Pre-commit hooks

  How to use pre-commit hooks on GH Actions

• Release
• Repo admin

Content

The pages in this section covers a variety of tools and flows including Python, NPM, Jekyll, GitHub Pages and mixing them together.

Here are some highlights.

What can do with GitHub Actions?

Here are some popular things to do:

• Quality and security
  • Test for application for quality and security vulnerabities.
  • e.g. Use Python/Node/Ruby to run lint and unit steps your a main branch or a Pull Request.
  • e.g. Run CodeQL scans on commits and on a schedule, using GitHub’s codeql-action action.
• Distribute
  • Build your Python/Node/Ruby/etc. application and on a tag or release on GitHub then package and publish the app to the appropriate packages registry.
  • Create a compiled binary or zip file and add it to a GitHub Release automatically.
• Build a static site
  • e.g. Use MkDocs, Jekyll 4 or Hugo to generate static HTML assets.
  • Serve your site on a built gh-pages branch using GitHub Pages.
  • Store your site output somewhere else such as to AWS S3.
• Build a web app
  • e.g. If you have single-page application in Node like using React or Vue, you can use the package’s build command to output your static files.
  • Build content for use on GH Pages or another platform.
• Check links.
  • Run a link checker to find broken links on your site on a commit push or at intervals.
• Check site performance
  • Run Google Lighthouse checks on a schedule or on a Pull Request, to ensure your site remains performant and meets SEO standards.
• GitHub tasks
  • Perform admin actions on a PR like add a label or welcome a contributor or add a cat GIF.

Basics

• Start with Basic if you are new to GH Actions.
• Continue to Basic Node as that is still simple and will be useful for Node.js developers.
• To learn more about specific fields like jobs and the on trigger, see my GitHub Actions cheatsheets.

Building and serving a site

• The Deploy GH Pages section covers how to build a static site (e.g. Jekyll or Hugo) or Node.js app (e.g. Vue or React) and then serve it as as GH Pages site.
• You can also see the Jekyll section which also covers a Jekyll 4 + GH Pages flow.
• The MkDocs section is Python-based way of a building a docs site that can be hosted on GH Pages.

If you’re building with Jekyll 3 on GitHub Pages are don’t need custom plugins, then maybe you don’t need the overhead of GH Actions and can use the plain GH Pages flow.

If you want to build a docs site without worrying about writing code or using GH Actions, use my DocsifyJS Template project. It is just static assets (HTML and Markdown) and doesn’t even need a package.json file or any processing.

Persist

For more info on how to persist build artifacts in general and not just for GH Pages, see the Persisting workflow data using artifacts section of GH docs.

That could be useful for example if you want to compile your project as a single and then add that as an attachment on a release.