04-Create-CT-Actions.md

Creating basic CT Github Action

This exercise will walk you through setting up Continuous Testing on your current repository.

The objective of Continuous Testing is to achieve constant feedback on your changes to your code base and enable the process of testing your code base.

GitHub Actions run off of workflow files that are managed and maintained in your repository. The action we are going to "install" on our repository uses an open source Action called the Super Linter. This action will review changes to the code and run a linter against it to ensure code sanity.

Add a GitHub Action workflow file

1. Create a new branch of code called CT

2. Create a new file named .github/workflows/ct.yml

3. Copy the code below to the newly created file:

   ---
   ########
   ########
   ## CT ##
   ########
   ########
   name: Continuous Testing
   
   #
   # Documentation:
   # https://help.github.com/en/articles/workflow-syntax-for-github-actions
   #
   
   #############################
   # Start the job on all push #
   #############################
   # Don't need to run on push to master/main
   on:
     push:
       branches-ignore:
         - 'master'
         - 'main'
   
   ###############
   # Set the Job #
   ###############
   jobs:
     build:
       # Name the Job
       name: CT
       # Set the agent to run on
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       ##################
       # Load all steps #
       ##################
       steps:
         ##########################
         # Checkout the code base #
         ##########################
         - name: Checkout Code
           uses: actions/checkout@v2
           with:
             fetch-depth: 0
   
         ################################
         # Run Linter against code base #
         ################################
         - name: Lint Code Base
           uses: github/super-linter@v4
           env:
             VALIDATE_ALL_CODEBASE: false
             DEFAULT_BRANCH: main
             GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

4. Commit the file.

This workflow file is set up to run when a push is made to branches in the repository, unless they are pushed to the main or master branch. This is controlled by this section of the code:

    push:
      branches-ignore:
        - 'master'
        - 'main'

When we push a change to a branch, the GitHub Action will clone the repository code base, and run the Super Linter against the changes.

Running your GitHub Action

1. Open a pull request with the CT branch into the main branch.

   In the pull request, you will see the GitHub Actions job running and its results. You can review the logs of the run and the steps it took by clicking on Details next to the GitHub Action. You can experiment with this Action, but making additional updates to the code and committing it.

2. Merge the pull request.