setup-python VS upload-artifact

Run a local host with the static website content with Python setup Github Actions

setup-python

The first two steps are setting up the job's environment. The checkout action will checkout out the repository at the triggering ref. The setup-python action will setup the desired Python runtime. My package supports Python 3.9+ so I'm targeting the minimum version for my build environments.

actions/setup-python@v4 does not support arm64 (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/actions/python-versions/main/versions-manifest.json). See related Open issue https://github.com/actions/setup-python/issues/108.

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

To build your environment in GH Actions you'll need to add a block to your yaml file BEFORE the Azure Build and Deploy section. You'll need to include the setup-python action and specify the python version you would like to use. Use the major version of your python version so 3.10 and NOT 3.10.5. For more information and options on this you can check out the Setup-Python GH actions repo.

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.

Python 3.9 is setup using actions/[email protected] and the pip packages are cached

It requires that the checkout and setup-python actions be used first.

First, we have to checkout the repository in GitHub Actions using GitHub's own checkout action. Then, we have to set up the Python version using GitHub's setup-python action. Finally, we can use Black's provided GitHub Action for checking formatting - it runs black --check --diff on the workflow runner's clone of the repo and outputs an error code if any Python file in the repo fails Black's formatting rules. Note that Black fails if the AST cannot be parsed (i.e. if there are any syntax errors), so it can also be used for checking syntax correctness, which itself is a good proxy for checking for merge conflict strings.

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.