> GHA has "service containers", but unfortunately the feature is too basic to address real-world use cases: it assumes a container image can just … boot! … and

> GHA has "service containers", but unfortunately the feature is too basic to address real-world use cases: it assumes a container image can just … boot! … and only talk to the code via the network. Real world use cases often require serialized steps between the test & the dependencies, e.g., to create or init database dirs, set up certs, etc.) My biased recommendation is to write a custom Dagger function, and run it in your GHA workflow. https://dagger.io https://dagger.io If you find me on the Dagger discord, I will gladly write a code snippet summarizing what I have in mind, based on what you explained of your CI stack. We use GHA ourselves and use this pattern to great effect. Disclaimer: I work there :)