To get the most out of this book

You will need the following:

Software/hardware covered in the book	OS requirements
GitHub	All operating systems are compatible. You will need an account on https://github.com.
Visual Studio Code	All operating systems are compatible. If you want, you can use GitHub Codespaces for all recipes. In this case, you don’t have to install anything locally. If you want to work locally, then you’ll need Visual Studio Code (https://code.visualstudio.com/download) and the subsequent tools.
Git	Only required if you work locally. All operating systems are compatible. You should have an up-to-date version of Git installed (at least version 2.23).
GitHub CLI	Only required if you work locally. Install the GitHub CLI (https://cli.github.com/).
Node.js	Only required if you work locally. You’ll need an up-to-date version of Node.js (I’m using 21 at the time of writing). All operating systems are compatible. Download the latest version here: https://nodejs.org/en/download/current.
Docker	Only required if you work locally. Get Docker for all operating systems here: https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/.
Azure and the Azure CLI	For some chapters, you’ll need an Azure account and the Azure CLI. A free test version will be sufficient (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free). If you want to work locally, you’ll also need the Azure CLI.

All recipes can be done with a free GitHub account in public repositories. You can use GitHub Codespaces to do anything in a virtual environment. This will use up your 120 free hours per month (180 with GitHub Pro). Be aware of that. Once the free hours are used, you’ll have to pay per minute for Codespaces.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code via the GitHub repository (link available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/GitHub-Actions-Cookbook. If there’s an update to the code, it will be updated in the GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!