I spend most of my time developing on the front ends that host on cloud environments. Most of these projects do not require me to ever inspect servers things as they just kind of work, which is nice.

From my understanding, tmate is a tool that provides instant terminal sharing. You're able to activate a secure shell or SSH to explore and run commands. I perform a lot of my debugging with action-tmate to access the hosted runner environments.

name: CI
on: [push]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v4
    - name: Setup tmate session
      uses: mxschmitt/action-tmate@v3

To do this, I paste the action directly into my workflows using the mxschmitt/action-tmate repo.

name: CI
on: [push]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - name: Setup tmate session
      uses: mxschmitt/action-tmate@v3

It takes a few seconds for a tmate to provide the URL, but when it does, I can start navigating the environment.

In the gif, you can see the I have a fully running environment for me to test out.

So if you find yourself stuck and seeing some weirdness in your workflows, consider opening a tmate session and sharing with coworkers. Just keep in mind that you are running a live session that uses action minutes and has access to any used GITHUB_TOKEN's.

This is part of my 28 days of Actions series. To get notified of more GitHub Action tips, follow the GitHub organization right here on Dev.

01:59

The Secrets of An Authenticated GitHub Action Workflow

Brian Douglas for GitHub ・ Feb 11 '21

#devops #github #githubactions