setup.md

Github Actions Katas

This series of katas will go through the basic steps in github actions, making you able to make CI builds in the end.

Learning Goals

• Creating an instance of the template repository
• Creating a workflow file seeing GitHub Actions in action

Exercise

Overview

In this exercise we are creating your own instance of this templated repository, and creating a workflow.

💡 If you want to clone the newly created repository down on your machine, you need to have git set up there. Here are the commands to set it up

You need to provide your email and name to git with the following commands.

git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
git config --global user.name "Your Name"

When you do a git clone, then you will be asked for your username and password. If you want to avoid that, you can set up an ssh key. Here is a guide on how to do that. It will take you 5-10 minutes though, so if you are in a hurry, just use the username and password.

Tasks

Create a repository

• Go to Code tab of this repository

• Click Use this template and Create a new repository

  

• Fill in the details for your new repository:

  • Owner: Select your GitHub user as the owner.
  • Name: github-actions-katas or something similar.
  • Description: Add a description if you want.
  • Visibility: Public. This is important! Some of the exercises later on will fail if the visibility of the repository is not public.

• Press Create repository.

• Once the repository is created, open the Setup exercise again in this new repository.

The new repository has now been created as a public repository under your own user, and you should be reading this in the new repository.

💡 From this point forward, all actions should be performed in the repository you just created, not the template repository

Create a simple workflow

In this part of the exercise we will create a simple workflow that just prints "Hello, world!" to the build log.

• Click on the Actions tab
• Click on the Setup the workflow yourself link

The file .github/workflows/main.yml will be opened as an empty file in the GitHub web editor.

• Copy the following content into the file and save it:

# This is a basic workflow to help you get started with Actions

name: CI

# Controls when the workflow will run
on:
  # Triggers the workflow on push or pull request events but only for the "main" branch
  push:
    branches: [ "main" ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ "main" ]

  # Allows you to run this workflow manually from the Actions tab
  workflow_dispatch:

# A workflow run is made up of one or more jobs that can run sequentially or in parallel
jobs:
  # This workflow contains a single job called "build"
  build:
    # The type of runner that the job will run on
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    # Steps represent a sequence of tasks that will be executed as part of the job
    steps:
      # Checks-out your repository under $GITHUB_WORKSPACE, so your job can access it
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      # Runs a single command using the runners shell
      - name: Run a one-line script
        run: echo Hello, world!

      # Runs a set of commands using the runners shell
      - name: Run a multi-line script
        run: |
          echo Add other actions to build,
          echo test, and deploy your project.

• Click Commit changes - found in the upper right corner of the screen - and commit to the main branch
• Go to the Actions tab and see the workflow running
• Click on the workflow and see the output of the workflow

Summary

Congratulations! You have now created your first workflow! It does not do much, but in the next exercise we will start building on it.