Running Github Actions On Local Machine.
By: Saurabh Kadam
Tags: Ci Cd Pipeline, Github, Github Actions, DevOps, Devops Tool

Github Action is one heck of the CI, but you want to create a new CI/CD pipeline in Github. The only way to test is the making push or pull requests to the respective repository.

Source: GOOGLE

What if I tell you there is one more way to test run Github actions.

https://github.com/nektos/act is one of the solutions for testing your pipeline on local for syntax fix or even fixing script before pushing to Github.

For Mac, it is a straightforward install.

brew install act

It will download and install the dependencies for the local run. To use it in a repository, clone the repo on the local machine

Once it is installed, go to the root directory. We can start experimenting with stuff like total steps in the workflow. I have only step workflow to show which GitHub provides. So it is showing as stage 0.

$ act -l

ID Stage Name test 0 test build 0 build

the act is the command used to run the workflow. It will ask for the image that you want to use to run the workflow. Please choose an image as per your requirement. More details are mentioned in that repo’s README.

act ? Please choose the default image you want to use with act: - Large size image: +20GB Docker image, includes almost all tools used on GitHub Actions (IMPORTANT: currently only ubuntu-18.04 platform is available) - Medium size image: ~500MB, includes only necessary tools to bootstrap actions and aims to be compatible with all actions - Micro size image: <200MB, contains only NodeJS required to bootstrap actions, doesn't work with all actions Default image and other options can be changed manually in ~/.actrc (please refer to https://github.com/nektos/act#configuration for additional information about file structure) Medium

For help, it is command act-h

Usage: act [event name to run] If no event name passed, will default to "on: push" [flags] Flags: -a, --actor string user that triggered the event (default "nektos/act") -b, --bind bind working directory to container, rather than copy --container-architecture string Architecture which should be used to run containers, e.g.: linux/amd64. If not specified, will use host default architecture. Requires Docker server API Version 1.41+. Ignored on earlier Docker server platforms. --container-cap-add stringArray kernel capabilities to add to the workflow containers (e.g. --container-cap-add SYS_PTRACE) --container-cap-drop stringArray kernel capabilities to remove from the workflow containers (e.g. --container-cap-drop SYS_PTRACE) --container-daemon-socket string Path to Docker daemon socket which will be mounted to containers (default "/var/run/docker.sock") --defaultbranch string the name of the main branch --detect-event Use first event type from workflow as event that triggered the workflow -C, --directory string working directory (default ".") -n, --dryrun dryrun mode --env stringArray env to make available to actions with optional value (e.g. --env myenv=foo or --env myenv) --env-file string environment file to read and use as env in the containers (default ".env") -e, --eventpath string path to event JSON file --github-instance string GitHub instance to use. Don't use this if you are not using GitHub Enterprise Server. (default "github.com") -g, --graph draw workflows -h, --help help for act --insecure-secrets NOT RECOMMENDED! Doesn't hide secrets while printing logs. -j, --job string run job -l, --list list workflows --no-recurse Flag to disable running workflows from subdirectories of specified path in '--workflows'/'-W' flag -P, --platform stringArray custom image to use per platform (e.g. -P ubuntu-18.04=nektos/act-environments-ubuntu:18.04) --privileged use privileged mode -p, --pull pull docker image(s) even if already present -q, --quiet disable logging of output from steps -r, --reuse reuse action containers to maintain state --rm automatically remove containers just before exit -s, --secret stringArray secret to make available to actions with optional value (e.g. -s mysecret=foo or -s mysecret) --secret-file string file with list of secrets to read from (e.g. --secret-file .secrets) (default ".secrets") --use-gitignore Controls whether paths specified in .gitignore should be copied into container (default true) --userns string user namespace to use -v, --verbose verbose output --version version for act -w, --watch watch the contents of the local repo and run when files change -W, --workflows string path to workflow file(s) (default "./.github/workflows/")

To run the workflow as a dry run, it is act-n. The successful output looks like this.