The Pain That Is GitHub Actions

Post by eXpl0it3r » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 10:24 AM UTC

__float wrote: post #343

mike_hearn wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It peaked with Jenkins? I'm curious which CI platforms you've used. I swear by TeamCity. It doesn't seem to have any of these problems other people are facing with GitHub Actions. You can configure it with a GUI, or in XML, or using a type safe Kotlin DSL. These all actually interact so you can 'patch' a config via the GUI even if the system is configured via code, and TeamCity knows how to store config in a git repo…

TeamCity's "config as code" feels a bit like an afterthought to me. (It's very Windows-style, where PowerShell got bolted on, and you're still fighting a bit of an upstream current getting clickops users out of old habits. I've also only experienced it at .NET-stack jobs, though, so I might be a bit biased :-) (I don't recall _loving_ it, though I don't have as many bad memories of it as I do for VSTS/TFS, GitLab, GH…

Post by guappa » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 10:48 AM UTC

voxic11 wrote: post #301

dathinab wrote: post #106

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It really depends on what you do? GitHub CI is designed in a way which tends to work well for - languages with no or very very cheap "compilation" steps (i.e. basically only scripting languages) - relatively well contained project (e.g. one JS library, no mono repo stuff) - no complex needs for integration tests - no need for compliance enforcement stuff, especially not if it has to actually be securely enforced inst…

> no need for compliance enforcement stuff I find github actions works very well for compliance. The ability to create attestations makes it easy to enforce policies about artifact provenance and integrity and was much easier to get working properly compared to my experience attempting to get jenkins to produce attestations. https://docs.github.com/en/actions/security-for-github-actio... https://docs.github.com/en/ac…

Post by llm_nerd » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 11:26 AM UTC

solatic wrote: post #370

> Trivial mistakes (formatting, unused deps, lint issues) should be fixed automatically, not cause failures. Do people really consider this best practice? I disagree. I absolutely don't want CI touching my code. I don't want to have to remember to rebase on top of whatever CI may or may not have done to my code. Not all linters are auto-fixable so anyway some of the time I would need to fix it from my laptop. If it's…

Post by noplacelikehome » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 11:42 AM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #476

noplacelikehome wrote: post #442

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Nix is awesome for this -- write your entire series of CI tools in she'll or Python and run them locally in the exact same environment as they will run in CI. Add SOPS to bring secrets along for the ride.

Would Nix work well with GitHub Actions? Or is it more of a replacement? How do you automate running tests and deploying to dev on every push, for example?

    devShells.default = pkgs.mkShell {
      packages = with pkgs; [ opentofu terragrunt ];
    };

    jobs:
      terragrunt-plan:
        runs-on: [self-hosted, Linux, X64]
        defaults:
          run:
            shell: nix develop --command bash -e {0}
        steps:
          - name: Checkout
            uses: actions/checkout@v4
          - name: Plan
            run: terragrunt --terragrunt-non-interactive run-all plan

Post by williamdclt » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 11:46 AM UTC

sd9 wrote: post #519

QuercusMax wrote: post #432

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It's the British spelling of "jail", as in "John Bunyan, a prominent Puritan preacher and author, spent 12 years in Bedford Gaol from 1660 to 1672." Pronounced jail, I believe.

It’s the Gaelic spelling of “jail”. It hasn’t been used in mainstream British English since the 60s, outside of specific place names. Everyone in England says “jail” or “prison” today. It might be a bit different in Ireland.