toolkit VS typescript-action

Different libraries (like actions/toolkit and microsoft/azure-pipelines-task-lib) with more accessible and easy-to-use APIs are available out-of-box

I used the libraries from actions/toolkit to create my action. It's more comfortable than when I did it with Docker. I looked at all the libraries, and most of all: actions/core, actions/exec and actions/github.

The Action is built using TypeScript and Node.js, popular choices for GitHub Actions due to their excellent support for asynchronous operations, a crucial requirement considering the multiple I/O operations involved. In the initial setup, I used the actions/toolkit package which provides useful utilities to streamline the creation of GitHub Actions. I picked @actions/core for basic functionalities such as inputs, outputs, and error handling, @actions/github to interact with GitHub's REST API, and @actions/exec to execute shell commands.

The package @actions/github provides a hydrated Octokit.js client. Octokit.js is the SDK of GitHub and contains several subpackages like @octokit/rest and @octokit/graphql to interact with the REST or GraphQL API.

The GitHub Action was implemented with TypeScript using the GitHub Actions Toolkit and the OpenAI Node.js Library. The Action is activated on new comments on issues and pull requests if they mention @AdaGPT. The relevant issue number is determined from the event payload. Then all existing comments for this issue are read. If the issue is a pull request, the git diff is also read.

Creating actions can be an overwhelming task, so to help you on your journey, here are two indispensable resources that can assist you in getting started; Actions Toolkit and Javascript action template. Still, this article will dive into how to create an action.

Please support something like "allow-failure" for a given job

More than 2 years of ignoring requests to add an important feature (allow-failure) to Github Actions (ref, ref. When not ignoring, completely misunderstanding the feature as if those building Github Actions are unfamiliar with core features of competing platforms.

While learning about GitHub Actions, I came across the GitHub Actions Org, and they have a bunch of templates for building custom GitHub actions. So, I started searching for a template that has TypeScript support, ensuring type safety to write bug-free code. I found the typescript-action template that includes support for tests, linter, versioning, and more.

This is the template I used for my TypeScript action https://github.com/actions/typescript-action

I found the GitHub actions documentation easier to read than Azure, so I would recommend starting writing and testing your extensions on GitHub by using the official template actions/typescript-action. The mentioned template provides a good starting point; I won't repeat the steps here. Play with it, write some simple stuff, and then return here for the next steps.

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

To get started quickly with a JavaScript action, I recommend using the official templates from GitHub for JavaScript and TypeScript.

On the TypeScript side, setup was much easier. There was already a template from GitHub that took care of the basics. Most of the time spent here was updating dependencies and getting my editor to play nicely with it—18 minutes, about 10% of the total.

Now that you know how to create your own GitHub Actions, why not give it a try? Head to the GitHub Marketplace and start exploring the existing Actions, or create your own and share it with the community. With GitHub Actions, the possibilities are endless, so start building and see what you can accomplish

Your build most likely fails because your tests fail. Most CI pipelines today, like Jenkins, Circleci, GitLab, TeamCity, Bamboo, and GitHub Actions, are configured to automatically cause the build process to fail when tests fail.