Learning about GitHub Actions' core concepts and components

Adding GitHub Actions to your repository is as simple as committing a file. To create an effective workflow, however, it is important to understand the core components and concepts that GitHub Actions is comprised of. This section will introduce them, as follows:

• Events
• Jobs
• Steps
• Actions
• Runners

Let's explore what they are.

Events

GitHub Actions are event-driven. This means that you can define what happens after a specific event occurs.

Events are specific activities that trigger workflows. Workflows can be triggered by three groups of events:

• Scheduled events
• Manual events
• Webhook events

Let's look at each in detail.

Scheduled events

Scheduled events trigger a workflow run at a specified time. They use the POSIX cron syntax.

The following example shows part of a workflow file, written in YAML, where the workflow will be triggered every...