This repository contains a simple GitHub Action which allows you to run a shell-script every time an event occurs within your repository.
This action allows you to run a shell-script when your workflow action is triggered. If your script terminates with an exit-code of 0 that is regarded as a pass, otherwise the action will be marked as a failure.
The expectation is that you'll use this action to launch your project-specific test-cases, ensuring that all pull-requests, commits, or both, are tested automatically.
Because the action ultimately executes a shell-script contained in your repository you can be as simple or complex as you can like, for example a golang project might contain a script such as this:
#!/bin/sh
# Run the go-vet tool.
go vet ./.. || exit 1
# Run the test-cases, with race-detection.
go test -race ./... || exit 1
# Everything passed, exit cleanly.
exit 0
A C-based project could contain something like this instead:
#!/bin/sh
make && make test
But as you can install/invoke arbitrary commands, and update them as your project grows, you can do almost anything you wish.
There are two steps required to use this action:
- Enable the action inside your repository.
- You'll probably want to enable it upon pull-requests, to ensure their quality.
- You might also want to enable it to run each time a push is made to your repository, for completeness.
- Add your project-specific test-steps to a script in your repository.
- By default this action will execute
.github/run-tests.sh, but you can specify a different name if you prefer. - The exit-code of your script will determine the result.
- By default this action will execute
Defining Github Actions requires that you create a directory .github/workflows inside your repository. Inside the workflow-directory you create files which are processed when various events occur.
For example:
- .
github/workflows/pull_request.yml- This is used when a pull-request is created/updated upon your repository.
.github/workflows/push.yml- This is used when a commit is pushed to your repository.
The simplest example of using this action would be to create the file .github/workflows/pull_request.yml with the following contents:
on: pull_request
name: Pull Request
jobs:
test:
name: Run tests
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@master
- name: Test
uses: skx/github-action-tester@masterThis example will run the default test-script, .github/run-tests.sh, every time a pull-request is created, edited, or updated.
As noted github actions can be launched on multiple events, for example pushes to branches, new releases, pull-request related events, and similar.
Because you probably wish to run different tests/scripts on these different events it is possible to override the name/path of the shell-script which is executed on a per-event basis.
For example you might wish to run more thorough tests upon pull-requests, and a smaller subset when a push is made to your master branch (on the assumption that commits there are rare, and the usual workflow will have ensured the full-tests will have been executed via pull-requests).
As an example you might create a workflow for use solely with pushes to master, in the file .github/workflows/push.yml:
on:
push:
branches:
- master
name: Push Event
jobs:
test:
name: Run tests
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@master
- name: Test
uses: skx/github-action-tester@master
with:
script: .github/fast-tests.shHere we've done two things:
- We've limited the action to only apply to pushes made to the
masterbranch. - We've explicitly set the name of the testing-script to
.github/fast-tests.sh- With the expectation this script contains only "quick" tests.
- With slower tests being applied to pull-requests.