Week 6 - Day 3: GitHub Actions Deep Dive

⏱ Duration: 5 Hours

📚 Learning Objectives

Understand GitHub Actions workflow syntax
Create workflows with jobs and steps
Use secrets and environment variables
Work with artifacts and caching

📖 Core Concepts

Workflow File Structure

# .github/workflows/ci.yml
name: CI Pipeline

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      
      - name: Set up Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v4
        with:
          python-version: '3.11'
      
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: |
          pip install -r requirements.txt
      
      - name: Run tests
        run: |
          pytest tests/

Using Secrets

# Set secrets in: Settings → Secrets → Actions
# Use in workflow:
- name: Deploy
  env:
    AWS_ACCESS_KEY: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY }}
  run: ./deploy.sh

Matrix Builds

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        python-version: ['3.9', '3.10', '3.11']
    steps:
      - uses: actions/setup-python@v4
        with:
          python-version: ${{ matrix.python-version }}

🔬 Hands-on Lab

Create CI Workflow

Create .github/workflows/ci.yml
Add build and test steps
Test with a pull request

← Day 2: CI/CD Concepts Day 4: Building Pipelines →