Exploring GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions is a feature of GitHub that you can use to automatically build, test, and deploy source code. GitHub Actions is a product that consists of workflows, events, jobs, actions, and runners:

• A workflow is a YAML file stored in the .github/workflows folder of a repository. A workflow contains events and jobs.
• An event specifies what triggers a workflow. When should the workflow be started?
• A job consists of steps that are executed on a runner machine.
• A step can run a script or an action.
• An action is a reusable GitHub extension that reduces the need to write scripts. Many of these reusable extensions can be used to build and deploy applications.

Now that we’ve set the foundation with these terms, let’s get into the details by creating a workflow using the Azure portal.

Creating a GitHub Actions workflow

There are several options to automatically create GitHub Actions workflows to deploy services...