Chaminda Chandrasekara - Hands-on GitHub Actions: Implement CI/CD with GitHub Action Workflows for Your Applications

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the books product page, located at www.apress.com/978-1-4842-6463-8 . For more detailed information, please visit http://www.apress.com/source-code .

GitHub is the most widely used source code repository provider. It is embraced by the open source community and by many software development companies. Today, source code is essentially required to have continuous integration and continuous delivery/deployments (CI/CD) to target environments because automation has become a norm in software development practices and includes the wide adoption of agility.

GitHub repositories can be integrated with third-party CI/CD integration tools, such as Jenkins or Azure DevOps. Since Microsofts acquisition, GitHub repos are now closely integrated with Azure DevOps. However, bringing all GitHub customers to use Azure DevOps is a tough ask, considering the wide adoption of GitHub by open source and non-Microsoft software development technology users.

GitHub Actions facilitate a state-of-the-art CI/CD workflow platform inside GitHub. The actions provide options to implement build and deployment workflows within GitHub. GitHub Actions enable pull request validation to enhance repository branch stability to the next level by assuring the code compilation state with each merge.

This hands-on book was written as a day-to-day reference for developers and Ops teams to build quality CI/CD workflows. The book offers in-depth lessons on implementation patterns, solutions for different technology builds, guidelines for implementing custom components as actions, and descriptions of the features available with GitHub Actions workflows to set up CI/CD for your repositories.

The book consists of sample code in each lesson to guide you through getting started with GitHub Actions workflows in your web or mobile applications, targeting any platform and any language. In addition to using GitHub-hosted machines (runners) to run the workflows, the book guides you through setting up your machines as runners for GitHub Actions. A detailed exploration of the available actions, syntax usage reference guides, and custom action implementation for your specific needs provide all the essentials you need to implement GitHub Actions workflows for your GitHub repositories.

We are thankful to all the mentors who have encouraged and helped us during our careers and who have provided us with so many opportunities to gain the maturity and the courage needed to write this book.

We would also like to thank our friends and colleagues who have helped and encouraged us in so many ways.

Last, but in no way least, we owe a huge debt to our families, not only because they have put up with late-night typing, research, and our permanent air of distraction, but also because they have had the grace to read what we have written. Our heartfelt gratitude is offered to them for helping us make this dream come true.