setup-java VS upload-artifact

Then, we have two important initial steps to define. The first one is an official GitHub Action used to check-out a repository so a workflow can access it. The second one it's pretty more complex but, briefly, downloads and set up a requested version of Java.

The most popular ones are Node.js, Python, Java JDK, Go, .Net Core SDK.

Finally, note that the v2 of setup-java GitHub Action limits the possible JDK distributions to four options. If you need to use one that is not listed, use foojayio/setup-java instead to configure any distribution.

See https://github.com/actions/setup-java for more configuration regarding distribution, version and caching.

Why can't Oracle just integrate with https://github.com/actions/setup-java like everyone else?

Next up we'll need to add a step to compile our production ready build. For this we can add two new steps, one which configures our Node version to ensure it matches our application, followed by another that runs the necessary commands with npm. Depending on how your application is built you may need to add another step between these to install any sort of required environments such as Python or Java.

Set up the JDK with the actions/setup-java GitHub Action.

It now works (as of yesterday) with Github Actions via https://github.com/actions/setup-java and setting the distribution to temurin.

The Kotlin compiler needs Java to be present, so we use a predefined GitHub Action to install Java 1.8.

upload-artifact

Here, the concept of "upload" is a little confusing. What the GitHub action upload-artifact does is to "copy" the jar file to a publicly accessible folder.

The content of the build destination folder folder needs is saved and transferred to the following jobs in the workflow. We do this with the Github actions actions/upload-artifact

The action for uploading the artifact doesn't do too much, but it takes care of all the nuance around GitHub Pages artifacts specifically. You can view the action's source here. It will tar the path (provided by the with option) and then call the upload artifact action. The artifact's name is github-pages and has a 1 day expiration. This artifact has the name and format required for the deploy action. It all just works (so far).

➜ 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

Notice that already known commands like flutter pub get and flutter build apk (apk in case of Android; aab in case of iOS) now it shows up on our workflow. But, to upload the generated app file (artifact), we'll need to use the action upload-artifact@v1 and parse the build path which it will be storing the app file.

So the uploading will likely be done by upload artifact. Then you'll likely want to use a matrix build/package your tool across different OS's.

Artifacts are files like APKs, screenshots, test reports, logs, which the workflow generates. You can upload and download artifacts to the current workflow using actions/upload-artifact@v2 and actions/download-artifact@v2 respectively.