Github Actions: Getting Started Guide

Andrew Mitchell
5 min readNov 25, 2020

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This was originally posted on my personal blog https://amwebdev.com so if you found this post useful (or you like better syntax highlighting) and would like read others like it, go check it out!

Overview

Hello again! Today I’m going to get you started using Github Actions. Github Actions are an absolutely amazing resource for helping developers perform mundane tasks automatically. If you have never setup CI/CD systems before and want to get started, there is no better way than with Github Actions. So, let’s get started!

Github Actions Pricing

TLDR; It’s free for public repos and really reasonable for private repos with a very generous free tier! (2000 minutes free)

So, let’s talk pricing first since you don’t want to read a tutorial about some great product that you can’t afford. Luckily for you Github Actions Pricing is very affordable and by affordable I mean basically free for most users (I personally haven’t payed a dime) and still pretty cost-effective for larger teams and organizations. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Their pricing page is super straightforward and gives a really solid outline of how the tiered system works.

Getting Started

For starters, I’m going to assume you have a repo, preferably a Javascript repo, that you’ll want to follow along with in this Github Actions Tutorial. In this run through I’m going to go over how to setup an automatic eslint checker for your code! Exciting stuff I know, so let’s get started!

Create Github Workflows Folder

First things first we need to create the .github/workflows folders in the root of your repo. You can do this in your VS Code sidebar or by using the terminal with the following code:

mkdir .github/workflows

This is where all your Github Actions live in your repo. By adding this folder we are letting Github know that there are actions inside this repo that it needs to be executed the next time you push up your code.

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Andrew Mitchell
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Software Engineer, GraphQL Enthusiast, Typescript Evangelist, Coding Addict.

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