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.
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.
Run GitHub actions self hosted (takes 2 mins to setup)
Just ssh in and run it.
So many options.
If you are doing deployments, actions etc does exactly that. Run pure bash commands or whatever.
If you want it for other purposes, you essentially want to run a "server" application but don't want to manage a server. Just use serverless? Write a JS function (or some other languages) and the platform will run it when the event triggers.
Our Action has a single step, it has an "if: false" declaration so it never runs, and no runners are engaged. This immediately completes and fires off a "workflow_job" webhook which triggers the build server to act.