Multi Line commands and Executing Third Party Libraries

In this guide, you’ll learn how to streamline your GitHub Actions workflow by combining multiple shell commands into a single step and integrating a third-party CLI tool (cowsay). This approach reduces verbosity and keeps your CI/CD pipeline maintainable.

Workflow with Separate Steps

Initially, our workflow consisted of four discrete steps:

name: My First Workflow
on: push
jobs:
  first_job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Welcome message
        run: echo "My first GitHub Actions Job"

      - name: List files
        run: ls

      - name: Read file
        run: cat README.md

While functional, this pattern can become repetitive as your CI job grows.

Combining Multiple Commands in One Step

You can collapse several shell commands under a single run key by using a multiline pipe (|). Each command executes in sequence on the same virtual environment.

name: My First Workflow
on: push
jobs:
  first_job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: List and Read Files
        run: |
          echo "My first GitHub Actions Job"
          ls -ltra
          cat README.md

Adding a Third-Party CLI Tool

Next, let’s use cowsay—a fun ASCII art generator—to create a dragon illustration and append it to dragon.txt:

      - name: Generate ASCII Artwork
        run: cowsay -f dragon "Run for cover, I am a DRAGON....RAWR" >> dragon.txt

Installing Dependencies

Add an installation step immediately before invoking cowsay:

      - name: Install Cowsay
        run: |
          sudo apt-get update
          sudo apt-get install -y cowsay

Complete Workflow Example

Putting it all together, here’s your optimized workflow:

name: My First Workflow
on: push
jobs:
  first_job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: List and Read Files
        run: |
          echo "My first GitHub Actions Job"
          ls -ltra
          cat README.md

      - name: Install Cowsay
        run: |
          sudo apt-get update
          sudo apt-get install -y cowsay

      - name: Generate ASCII Artwork
        run: cowsay -f dragon "Run for cover, I am a DRAGON....RAWR" >> dragon.txt

Troubleshooting

Once you commit and push these changes, navigate to the Actions tab to monitor your workflow. If you forget to install cowsay, you’ll see a failure like this:

References

• GitHub Actions: Workflow Syntax
• actions/checkout
• GitHub Actions Runner Images