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Comment by darepublic | Hacker News Reader

I don't see how you love something that makes you jump through these hoops:

> In this particular case, it took me 4 separate commits (and 4 failed releases) to debug the various small errors I made: not using ${{ ... }}5 where I needed to, forgetting a needs: relationship, &c

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We use Github Actions and we just don't have any issues with it outside the first time we set it up for each repo. Then we make 100s of commits a week and it does its thing and our work goes live a few seconds later. That's why I love it.

Could things be better? Of course; that's how software is--and this should resonate with most folks on this site. But just because some product isn't infallible doesn't mean we can't love it too.

>Then we make 100s of commits a week and it does its thing and our work goes live a few seconds later.

Wow, computers doing what they're supposed to do. Pretty impressive ...

The UX on GH actions is crap, other CI/CD solutions give you way more control and tooling. GH really needs to step up their game on this one.

I am not sure why you’re being so snarky, but I did address that it could be better.

The thing for us is that we’re already paying for GitHub and Actions are included. I know, for a fact, GH is/was working with stakeholders using their software to get feedback on what could be better. So they are trying!

I’m not here being a fanboy by any means; I’m just saying it does what I need it to do and I’m an active user who is pleased with the service provided.

YMMV.

> we just don't have any issues with it outside the first time we set it up for each repo

But that's exactly what a lot of commenters complain about.

There's tools like Act[0] that tries to solve this, but this has been an issue with CI systems since they were invented.

[0] https://github.com/nektos/act

Also reused by gitea for their CI runner. I was quite impressed by that feat, pretty neat.

https://gitea.com/gitea/act_runner

Isn't that just programming? That's not much different than saying you forgot a bracket and had to make another commit to make it work. Granted, it would be nice if they had some linter.

This is a usecase where chatgpt works great! I usually pass this kind of ops DSL in gpt and it will find my mistakes. Github actions and graphanaQL code, oof, they just click for me.

I'm not gonna post my employer's proprietary code into ChatGPT.

Don't fixate on the details, fixate on the larger point. your specific situation of having code self-hosted and an employer that cares deeply about their proprietary code is a detail beside the point. LLMs shine at fixing up DSLs that you're unfamiliar with. chatgpt to llm is kleenex to facial tissue.

Generally programming these days does not require you to submit build jobs or jump through other hoops to catch trivial mistakes. Although it depends on what you do, embedded developers and game programmers writing for consoles might disagree.

It really feels like a throwback to the punch card era.

I too don't enjoy writing CI scripts (despite knowing Linux administration and shell scripting quite well), it always takes an inordinate amount of time, but it also saves much more over the long term.

Yeah, I wouldn’t want to use any automation that you can’t also easily and quickly test locally.

Fun fact: Microsoft had a plan to provide that!

They canned it.

https://github.com/microsoft/azure-pipelines-agent/pull/2687...

Act can do most of it locally

https://github.com/nektos/act

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