First look at GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions is a Continuous Integration tool built into GitHub that provides an easy way to automate code testing and more.

The Setup

I setup a new action to run Jest tests on "ubuntu-latest" using both Node 14 and Node 16 every time a new Pull Request is created or a new commit is added.
I tested it with a new PR and this is what showed up at the bottom:

This worked very well so I decided to also add actions to run Prettier and ESLint automatically. I looked through how Telescope implements Continuous Integration and I created a similar setup for static-dodo.

Here is my full GitHub Actions code (created in .github/workflows/:

name: Node.js CI
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]
jobs:
  prettier:
    name: Prettier Check
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v2
      - name: Install dependencies and run prettier-check
        run: |
          npm install
          npm run prettier-check
  eslint:
    name: ESLint Check
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v2
      - name: Install dependencies and run eslint
        run: |
          npm install
          npm run eslint
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        node-version: [14.x, 16.x]
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Use Node.js ${{ matrix.node-version }}
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: ${{ matrix.node-version }}
          cache: "npm"
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm test

The code is written in YAML and even though it is my first time using it, it is very descriptive and easy to read and learn.
Every time I add a new commit to the repo, the GitHub actions now starts automatically and adds a nice green check mark when all the automated tests passed successfully.

Thoughts

GitHub Actions is an amazing tool: it allows programmers to setup automation to always be sure that everything still works as more and more lines of codes are added to a project. I just scratched the surface of what is possible to accomplish with it but I will definitely continue using it going forward and hopefully lean some new tricks along the way!