GitHub Action Overview

Here, I’ll explain in simple terms what a GitHub action is and what its components are. You only receive a basic introduction to GitHub Action in this article. I will provide additional information in a separate section of the GitHub action.

Overview:

GitHub action is a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform which allows us to build code, test code & deploy. We can create a flow of our required steps into GitHub events such as pull, push and merge.

GitHub action run workflows when any GitHub event happens in the repository. For Ex. we can run an automatic workflow while any commit push is in the set repository.

GitHub provides a runner for a workflow like Linux, Windows & macOS Also, there is a self-hosted Runner facility that is available for its data headquarters or private infrastructure.

Elements of GitHub Actions:

we can configure a GitHub Actions workflow to for triggered when an event occurs in the GitHub repository. Contains the workflow having one or more jobs which can run in sequential order or parallel.

For all jobs run inside of your server or container which have data such as a run command for a task or run script which are already mentioned in workflow files.

Workflow:

Workflow is a configurable automated process which has secure data of all run processes are run in runners. GitHub workflow is written in YAML format.

The YAML or YML file is located in .github/workflows/*.yaml

a single directory has multiple workflow files according to automation.

Event:

An event is a specific activity for trigger workflow run for a selected repository. the activity starts when some pull, push, merge, or open issue from Repository.

Jobs:

Jobs have steps of command which are executed in the runner. each step has data of shell script or action that will run. since all steps of data can build code, test code or share the contact of data current runner to the destination server.

Action:

action is a custom application of the github platform which is performed complex frequently repeated tasks. use of action we can reduce the repeated lines of workflow files.

Runner:

The runner is a kind of server which provide the platform for performing workflow. GitHub provides runners like Linux, macOS and Windows to execute your workflow. each workflow executes with a fresh virtual machine which has no data or any installation. Also, there is functionality for the self-hosted runner which machine you have already in some cloud.