github-actions-workflow

GitHub Actions Workflow

Table of Contents

• Overview
• When to Use
• Quick Start
• Reference Guides
• Best Practices

Overview

Create powerful GitHub Actions workflows to automate testing, building, security scanning, and deployment processes directly from your GitHub repository.

When to Use

• Continuous integration and testing
• Build automation
• Security scanning and analysis
• Dependency updates
• Automated deployments
• Release management
• Code quality checks

Quick Start

Minimal working example:

# .github/workflows/ci.yml
name: CI/CD Pipeline
 
on:
  push:
    branches: [main

Reference Guides

Detailed implementations in the references/ directory:

Best Practices

✅ DO

• Use caching for dependencies (npm, pip, Maven)
• Run tests in parallel with matrix strategy
• Require status checks on protected branches
• Use environment secrets and variables
• Implement conditional jobs with if:
• Lint and format before testing
• Set explicit permissions with permissions
• Use runner labels for specific hardware
• Cache Docker layers for faster builds

❌ DON'T

• Store secrets in workflow files
• Run untrusted code in workflows
• Use secrets.* with pull requests from forks
• Hardcode credentials or tokens
• Miss error handling with continue-on-error
• Create overly complex workflows
• Skip testing on pull requests