everything else is trash.
Github Actions changed the landscape.
They're composable.
The only two other things that come close is Concourse.CI and CircleCi.... and circle-ci is 100% trash
If it works for you, great. But it is far from being good.
I've worked with Github Actions, Gitlab-CI and CircleCI in the last 10 years, and they've all been such an improvement over Jenkins, or god forbid, CVS with manual deployments, that I'm generally just counting my blessings.
For me the pain only came when not adhering to KISS. All the mentioned VCS are pretty much feature complete and only really differ on meta-topics (cost, license, lock-in) or niche topics (Actions marketplace, matrix builds, SSH on Runners). I've not yet run into an issue that would have actually blocked me, because there's always sh to fall back to in case of a bug or missing feature.
You can run all your CI locally if you don't embed your logic into the workflows, just use CI for orchestation. Use an env manager(Mise, Nix etc) to install tooling(you'll get consistency across your team & with CI) and call out to a task runner(scripts, Make, Task etc).
if you can, you don't need CI. we can't (too slow, needs an audit trail)
```yaml name: Continuous Integration (CI)
on: pull_request
permissions: contents: read
jobs: formatting: name: Formatting runs-on: ${{ matrix.architecture }} strategy: matrix: architecture: [ubuntu-24.04, ubuntu-24.04-arm] language: [rust, shell, python] steps: - name: Checkout code. uses: actions/checkout@8e8c483db84b4bee98b60c0593521ed34d9990e8 # v6.0.1 - name: Setup Nix. uses: cachix/install-nix-action@4e002c8ec80594ecd40e759629461e26c8abed15 # v31.9.0 - name: Check formatting. run: nix develop -c make check-${{ matrix.language }}-formatting
linting:
name: Linting
runs-on: ${{ matrix.architecture }}
strategy:
matrix:
architecture: [ubuntu-24.04, ubuntu-24.04-arm]
language: [rust]
steps:
- name: Checkout code.
uses: actions/checkout@8e8c483db84b4bee98b60c0593521ed34d9990e8 # v6.0.1
- name: Setup Nix.
uses: cachix/install-nix-action@4e002c8ec80594ecd40e759629461e26c8abed15 # v31.9.0
- name: Check linting.
run: nix develop -c make check-${{ matrix.language }}-linting
compile:
name: Compile
runs-on: ${{ matrix.architecture }}
strategy:
matrix:
architecture: [ubuntu-24.04, ubuntu-24.04-arm]
steps:
- name: Checkout code.
uses: actions/checkout@8e8c483db84b4bee98b60c0593521ed34d9990e8 # v6.0.1
- name: Setup Nix.
uses: cachix/install-nix-action@4e002c8ec80594ecd40e759629461e26c8abed15 # v31.9.0
- name: Compile.
run: nix develop -c make compile
unit-test:
name: Unit Test
runs-on: ${{ matrix.architecture }}
strategy:
matrix:
architecture: [ubuntu-24.04, ubuntu-24.04-arm]
steps:
- name: Checkout code.
uses: actions/checkout@8e8c483db84b4bee98b60c0593521ed34d9990e8 # v6.0.1
- name: Setup Nix.
uses: cachix/install-nix-action@4e002c8ec80594ecd40e759629461e26c8abed15 # v31.9.0
- name: Unit test.
run: nix develop -c make unit-test
- everything else is trash.
- Github Actions changed the landscape.
- They're composable.
And I still hate github actions! Aside from anything else, they have one major flaw, which is there is no good development/test loop for writing them.
If you write most of your CICD in some kind of script, then you can run it locally, and do some basic checks around environment etc before deploying.
If you write most of your CICD in github actions or any alternative, you will be doomed to push 100 commits with messages like "maybe be?", "hmmm. . ." before eventually squashing them all down when it turns out several hours later that you mispelt an environment variable.
once you're done, make the actual changes in your real repo. I call the test repo 'pincushion'
We maintain an internal service that hosts two endpoints; /random-cat-picture (random >512KB image + UUID + text timestamp to evade caching) and /api/v1/generic.json which allows developers and platform folks to test out new ideas from commit to deploy behind a load balancer in an end-to-end fashion, it has saved countless headaches over the years.