actions-gh-pages VS cache

Check out the GitHub action you can use for deploying to GitHub pages: https://github.com/peaceiris/actions-gh-pages.

In addition to just sharing the .html generated files which would likely be cumbersome, you can host the docs on github pages and use something like https://github.com/peaceiris/actions-gh-pages + github actions to upload the documentation from your private repository to a public repo (required for non paid users).

I started by using runs-on: ubuntu-22.04 in this workflow to check if everything works ok. It run without any issues. After that I created PRs to add support for ubuntu-22.04 and ubuntu-latest version to GitHub Actions for Hugo and GitHub Pages Action

As a first-step measure, we changed the CI script to overwrite the gh-pages branch at every run, rather than just appending a new commit. We use this gh-pages action, so it was just a matter of adding a force_orphan: true parameter.

Interesting to note that GitHub stores this workflow in the "main" branch under .github/workflows folder. For more details on this Action please refer the documentation and code at https://github.com/peaceiris/actions-gh-pages.

My first workflow is to build and deploy or preview Client, It runs whenever a push or pull request creates for main branch containing changes to the code of client. It install dependencies and builds vue.js app. After build I use peaceiris/actions-gh-pages to deploy it to Github Pages. If the event is Pull Request then deploy to a sub-directory named preview and commit hash and leave a comment on PR.

If the data fetch from previous step succeeds, the workflow continues by building the static website with Hugo. Hugo is setup using action peaceiris/actions-hugo. When the files are ready, the result is published to GitHub pages, using another GitHub action, peaceiris/actions-gh-pages.

peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3 - deploys any folder(s) to gh-pages, can use it for multiple static endpoints

For more information about the actions used and their options, please see Hugo and Github pages on Github.

This quote is quite true. Without automation, we would spend a lot of out time on things that would have to be done repetitively, for example, manually building and deploying your GitHub pages every time there is a change. Luckily, you can easily use GitHub Actions to build and deploy your pages by just pushing your repository to GitHub! You don't even need to do anything except to add a configuration file to your repository. In this post, I will be creating a workflow and using peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v3 from GitHub Marketplace (it's free).

> with no persistent storage

There's https://github.com/actions/cache though?

Use Cache Actions: GitHub Actions provides cache actions that simplify caching implementation. The @actions/cache JavaScript library is a popular choice for managing caching in workflows. It offers flexible options for storing and retrieving cache artifacts based on keys, scopes, and paths.

GitHub maintain a set of repos called actions. One of which is called cache.

By utilizing the actions/cache action action, we implemented a strategy to store and retrieve dependencies, preventing redundant installations.

I do think it's good practice to enable caching, such that your script doesn't hit RubyGems / pip / npm / etc every time it runs.

That way at least the automation activity stays entirely within the GitHub / Azure network.

It looks like you can do that for Ruby by adding this:

https://github.com/actions/cache/blob/master/examples.md#rub...

    - uses: ruby/setup-ruby@v1

➜ getting-started-with-act git:(master) act -j build WARN ⚠ You are using Apple M1 chip and you have not specified container architecture, you might encounter issues while running act. If so, try running it with '--container-architecture linux/amd64'. ⚠ [Node.js CI/build] 🚀 Start image=node:16-buster-slim [Node.js CI/build] 🐳 docker pull image=node:16-buster-slim platform= username= forcePull=false [Node.js CI/build] 🐳 docker create image=node:16-buster-slim platform= entrypoint=["tail" "-f" "/dev/null"] cmd=[] [Node.js CI/build] 🐳 docker run image=node:16-buster-slim platform= entrypoint=["tail" "-f" "/dev/null"] cmd=[] [Node.js CI/build] ☁ git clone 'https://github.com/actions/setup-node' # ref=v3 [Node.js CI/build] ☁ git clone 'https://github.com/actions/cache' # ref=v3 [Node.js CI/build] ☁ git clone 'https://github.com/actions/upload-artifact' # ref=v3 [Node.js CI/build] ⭐ Run Main actions/checkout@v3 [Node.js CI/build] 🐳 docker cp src=/Users/andrewevans/Documents/projects/getting-started-with-act/. dst=/Users/andrewevans/Documents/projects/getting-started-with-act [Node.js CI/build] ✅ Success - Main actions/checkout@v3 [Node.js CI/build] ⭐ Run Main Use Node.js 16.x [Node.js CI/build] 🐳 docker cp src=/Users/andrewevans/.cache/act/actions-setup-node@v3/ dst=/var/run/act/actions/actions-setup-node@v3/ [Node.js CI/build] 🐳 docker exec cmd=[node /var/run/act/actions/actions-setup-node@v3/dist/setup/index.js] user= workdir= [Node.js CI/build] 💬 ::debug::isExplicit: [Node.js CI/build] 💬 ::debug::explicit? false

You could try to find some point in the process where you can set up Actions caches with actions/cache, otherwise Container customization for Self-Hosted Runners is currently in Beta.

I would configure Github Actions cache so Docker doesn't have to compile all layers from scratch every time

In the copied example, npm caching is done via actions/cache@v2 action. But we can simplify our workflow by dropping this step and using built-in functionality for caching