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I've been overall disappointed with GH actions. Their YAML format lacks the ability to reuse common bits of configuration so you just need to copy/paste it all

I've been overall disappointed with GH actions. Their YAML format lacks the ability to reuse common bits of configuration so you just need to copy/paste it all over. Our project has minitest tests, rspec tests, and another type of tests. All the setup/boiler plate needs to be copied to job section, and kept in sync. Each test run depends on a huge number of 3rd party services being up. It pulls in docker images (DockerHub) and ubuntu packages (wherever the Ubuntu packages come from). It requires various azure services to be running (to use their cache and artifacts actions). It depends on github being up of course. Test runs fail multiple times per month because one of these services is down at the time the tests run. Until recently their cache action was often slower than just rebuilding the assets from scratch without the cache. The only compelling reason to switch to gh actions from any other CI service I've used is to reduce costs. you get what you pay for.

bredren 6y ago
I agree that the YAML format can be a pain. Both because of the copy/paste stuff you mentioned but also just validating syntax can be time consuming. There is an offline workflow tester I've tried but it is not close enough to the real thing to add that much value. I've also struggled at times with how data moves around. There are docs and even example actions, but the overall state of education on doing cool stuff with GA is pretty weak. I've also struggled with some of packages, and services--although some of the pain I've experienced is just software and service dependency management in general and that's a big challenge unrelated to GA. Speed is a real consideration, though self-hosted runners can potentially solve that problem for you. Rather than a get what you pay for take, I feel more like it is still early for the product. The visibility is high because it is Github, but it is still getting a lot of things worked out. For me, GA is too conveniently integrated to Github to ignore.

bredren 6y ago

I agree that the YAML format can be a pain. Both because of the copy/paste stuff you mentioned but also just validating syntax can be time consuming. There is an offline workflow tester I've tried but it is not close enough to the real thing to add that much value. I've also struggled at times with how data moves around. There are docs and even example actions, but the overall state of education on doing cool stuff with GA is pretty weak. I've also struggled with some of packages, and services--although some of the pain I've experienced is just software and service dependency management in general and that's a big challenge unrelated to GA. Speed is a real consideration, though self-hosted runners can potentially solve that problem for you. Rather than a get what you pay for take, I feel more like it is still early for the product. The visibility is high because it is Github, but it is still getting a lot of things worked out. For me, GA is too conveniently integrated to Github to ignore.