[dietrichepp]

I just started using GitHub Actions for a personal project, and as you do, I trawled HN for opinions on how to use it.

At first I built a workflow out of steps published on GitHub. Use ilammy/mms-dev-cmd, lukka/get-cmake, lukka/run-vcpkg, all to build a project with CMake for Windows targets. Of course I referred to actions by SHA like you should

   uses: ilammy/msvc-dev-cmd@0b201ec74fa43914dc39ae48a89fd1d8cb592756

But one comment stuck with me. Something like, “You should just run your own code on GitHub Actions, rather than piecing it together from publicly available actions.” That made a lot of sense. I ended up writing a driver program for my personal project’s CI builds. One job builds the driver program, and then the next job runs the driver program to do the entire build.

I wouldn’t do this if I were getting paid for it… it’s more time-consuming. But it means that I am only minimally tied to GitHub actions. I can run the build driver from my own computer easily enough.

[huijzer]

> I ended up writing a driver program for my personal project’s CI builds. One job builds the driver program, and then the next job runs the driver program to do the entire build.

Yes things like that have been discussed before on HN. Also for example use a justfile (or something similar) and then call that from inside the Action to reduce vendor lock-in.

[timewizard]

I use Actions merely as a way to trigger a custom Webhook. Then I do everything on the server that receives the hook with my own code. I hate YAML that much.

[dietrichepp]

What I want is something like “please run this command on a server somewhere when event X happens”. Seems like the options are along the lines of:

1. SaaS CI/CD products, like GitHub Actions,

2. Run your own Jenkins cluster,

3. Figure out how to orchestrate cloud resources to do this for you.

Maybe there are easy options that I’m missing. I don’t really want to create docker containers just to build some program I’m working on.

[arccy]

why not just use regular GitHub webhooks...

[djoel]

Do you mind linking the repo, if it's public? Thanks!