Pascal Führlich: Debugging GitHub Actions Locally
Channel: Society of Research Software Engineering
Date: 2023-01-05

A walkthrough from RSECon2022.

Details: https://virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/#/event/3101/submission/20

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Abstract: GitHub is the largest hosting service for source code. It offers a simple and free way to run continuous integration (CI) related tasks via GitHub Actions. One of the key features of running tests and quality control in a defined environment on a build server is that the system is quite different from the local setup of the developers. This ensures that the setup works on a fresh system, but this will also inevitably lead to situations where some tests or setup routines behave differently when running them locally vs. in a GitHub Action. Due to the non-interactive nature of GitHub Actions it is not possible to use standard debugging techniques, so instead the default workflow is to use print debugging, apply a potential fix, then commit and upload that to run the GitHub Action. This process has to be repeated many times, so it leads to lots of useless broken commits in the git history. Even more problematic is the duration of the feedback loop, leading to wasted hours or even days and frustrated programmers. In this walkthrough we take a look at how to run GitHub Actions locally, allowing for fast feedback and proper debugging.

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0:00 Walkthrough
21:23 Q&A