Build GitHub Actions with Typescript

They’re fast and they run everywhere

Photo by Ruca Souza from Pexels

GitHub Actions is a CI/CD platform

GitHub Actions (as for other CI/CD services/platforms):

• Triggers on events
• Prepare environment(s)
• Runs workflow(s)
• Report results

A GitHub Action can either be a Dockerfile or Javascript

In a Dockerfile action:

• The environment is defined by container layers
• The workflow is defined by entry point bash script

In a JavaScript action:

• The environment is defined in the package.json, as NPM modules
• The workflow is defined by the JavaScript/TypeScript code

JavaScript actions are faster and more stable

The strength of JavaScript actions, compared with Dockerfile actions, are:

• The familiar syntax for most web/mobile/back end developers
• Runs everywhere (JavaScript is less restrictive than Docker)
• Runs faster by skipping container building and VM warm-ups.

Note: Let’s treat ourselves better and use TypeScript instead of JavaScript!

Step 1: Configure the Action

The configuration will let GitHub know how to run the action and how to list it on the GitHub marketplace.

The configuration is defined with a yaml file, action.yml, that contains:

• The name of the action
• The arguments to the action
• The entry point to run the action

credit: example GitHub Actions configuration from readable-readme

Step 2: Implement the Microservices

1. write source code for your magical action: