I'm relatively new to GitHub Actions and I have 2 jobs–one that runs my tests, and one that deploys my project onto a server.
Obviously I want the tests to run on every branch, but deploying should only happen when something gets pushed to master.
I'm struggling to find a way to run a job on a specific branch. I know it's possible to only run entire workflows on a specific branch, however that would mean I would have a "test" workflow and a "deploy" workflow.
This sounds like a solution, however they would run parallel. In an ideal world, the tests would run first, and only if they succeed, then the deploy job would start. This isn't the case when using 2 separate workflows.
How would I be able to achieve this? Is it possible to run jobs on a specific branch?
In a recent update you can now put if conditionals at job level. See the documentation here. https://help.github.com/en/articles/workflow-syntax-for-github-actions#jobsjob_idif
I tested this workflow which runs the job test on every push, but only runs deploy on the master branch.
name: my workflow
on: push
jobs:
test:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Execute tests
run: exit 0
deploy:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
needs: test
if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/master'
steps:
- name: Deploy app
run: exit 0
What follows is my original answer, and an alternative solution if you prefer to have separate workflows.
The first workflow runs for every branch except master. In this workflow you run tests only.
on:
push:
branches:
- '*'
- '!master'
The second workflow runs for just master and runs both your tests and deploys if the tests were successfully passed.
on:
push:
branches:
- master
Here is what I've done for steps that should only run on a specific branch.
- name: Publish Image
# Develop branch only
if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/develop'
run: |
... publish commands ...
While you can't have conditions at job level at this moment, you can have conditions at step level - see Contexts and expression syntax for GitHub Actions.
For getting a branch name, current solution is to check GITHUB_REF environment variable - see Default environment variables and this question for details.
Putting it all together - if you decide to go with accepted answer in last link, your workflow might look like this:
jobs:
test:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Run tests
run: ./my-tests.sh
deploy:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
needs: test
steps:
- name: Extract branch name
shell: bash
run: echo "##[set-output name=branch;]$(echo ${GITHUB_REF##*/})"
id: extract_branch
- name: Deploy
run: ./deploy.sh
if: steps.extract_branch.outputs.branch == 'master'
If you'd rather keep everything in workflow file instead of separated script, you can always add if to each step in given job.
I hope it's just a temporary solution/workaround, and job conditions are going to be added before end of beta.
