What are GitHub Actions?

GitHub Actions

GitHub Blog describes GitHub Actions as an API for cause and effect on GitHub. GitHub Actions orchestrate any workflow, based on any event, while GitHub manages the execution, provides rich feedback, and secures every step along the way.

With GitHub Actions, it is easy to automate your software workflows right within GitHub where you host your source code, perform code reviews, and possibly even manage your project backlog.

It is a hosted service, so there is no need to manage any servers or deal with keeping any software patched and up-to-date.

Alternatives

Here are some of the alternatives to GitHub Actions:

• GitLab Pipelines
• Google Cloud Build
• Jenkins
• Circle CI
• Drone

Why GitHub Actions?

GitHub Actions provides a lot more convenience, as all you need to do is provide a workflow configuration file, push that to GitHub, and the rest is taken care of. It is also nicely integrated with GitHub, where developers spend quite a bit of time already. A bit less context or application switching to get the job done is good.

GitHub Actions in your web application

As described above, GitHub Actions allow us to define an automated workflow. To start, we are going to simply enable the deployment of the web application to production, when pull requests are merged to the master branch.

Note: To learn more about GitHub Actions beyond the scope of this course, please refer to GitHub Actions documentation.