GitHub Actions
GitHub Actions Core Concepts
What are Actions
GitHub Actions are modular, reusable units of automation that you integrate into your workflows to handle tasks such as continuous integration, continuous deployment, and code reviews. Authored by GitHub or community contributors, actions make it easy to share and maintain automation logic across repositories.
Discovering Actions on GitHub Marketplace
Explore the GitHub Marketplace to find hundreds of pre-built actions. Verified badges indicate official partner organizations, while unbadged entries are contributed by the community.
Security Best Practice
Always review an action’s source code before integrating it. Ensure it handles your repository’s content and secrets safely—never exposes secrets to unintended hosts or logs sensitive data.
Pinning Action Versions
For reliable and predictable workflows, define the action version by tag, branch, or commit SHA:
steps:
- name: Checkout using a specific tag
uses: actions/[email protected]
- name: Checkout using the main branch
uses: actions/checkout@main
- name: Checkout using a commit SHA
uses: actions/checkout@a824008085750b8e136effc585c3cd6082bd575f
| Strategy | Syntax Example | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tag | actions/[email protected] | Controlled upgrades between versions | Requires manual version updates |
| Branch | actions/checkout@main | Automatically uses the latest code | May introduce breaking changes |
| Commit SHA | actions/checkout@a824008085750b8e136effc585c3cd6082bd575f | Immutable reference for reproducible builds | Harder to benefit from upstream fixes |
Versioning Tip
Tags strike a balance between stability and ease of upgrades. Use SHAs when you need fully reproducible builds.
Next Steps
Before adding an action to your workflow, consult its documentation page for required inputs, outputs, environment variables, and any additional configuration.
Links and References
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