Automated CI/CD with GitHub Actions, starting from scratch

Have you ever developed a piece of code, pushed it to a GitHub repository main branch, and then moved on to other things? How do you ensure that the code remains functional in a few months’ time, when various dependencies have updated? How do you go about assigning a version number to allow clear traceability of issues for your users? And once you have released a version, how do you go about automatically deploying that to a package repository; ensuring easy installation for your userbase? In this walkthrough, we will take a basic software tool as an example and answer these questions (and more) by incrementally building up Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) workflows using the ubiquitous GitHub Actions platform. Workflows will be developed in a live demonstration. Among other things, we will show you how to automate testing, packaging and deployment for a range of triggers (e.g. updates to a pull request). We will explore the Marketplace for some of the reusable actions that you can embed in your own workflows. We will also talk about some of the pitfalls you will encounter if you don’t release regular versions of your code, and make the case for using CI/CD regardless of the size and reach of your codebase.A recording of this session is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ILkuwv2XJUI