Strathaus / comment-on-pr

Create a GitHub Action Using TypeScript

Use this template to bootstrap the creation of a TypeScript action. 🚀

This template includes compilation support, tests, a validation workflow, publishing, and versioning guidance.

If you are new, there's also a simpler introduction in the Hello world JavaScript action repository.

Validate the Action

You can now validate the action by referencing it in a workflow file. For example, ci.yml demonstrates how to reference an action in the same repository.

steps:
  - name: Checkout
    id: checkout
    uses: actions/checkout@v4

  - name: Test Local Action
    id: test-action
    uses: ./
    with:
      milliseconds: 1000

  - name: Print Output
    id: output
    run: echo "${{ steps.test-action.outputs.time }}"

For example workflow runs, check out the Actions tab! 🚀

Usage

After testing, you can create version tag(s) that developers can use to reference different stable versions of your action. For more information, see Versioning in the GitHub Actions toolkit.

To include the action in a workflow in another repository, you can use the uses syntax with the @ symbol to reference a specific branch, tag, or commit hash.

steps:
  - name: Checkout
    id: checkout
    uses: actions/checkout@v4

  - name: Test Local Action
    id: test-action
    uses: actions/typescript-action@v1 # Commit with the `v1` tag
    with:
      milliseconds: 1000

  - name: Print Output
    id: output
    run: echo "${{ steps.test-action.outputs.time }}"

Publishing a new release

This project includes a helper script designed to streamline the process of tagging and pushing new releases for GitHub Actions.

GitHub Actions allows users to select a specific version of the action to use, based on release tags. Our script simplifies this process by performing the following steps:

1. Retrieving the latest release tag: The script starts by fetching the most recent release tag by looking at the local data available in your repository.
2. Prompting for a new release tag: The user is then prompted to enter a new release tag. To assist with this, the script displays the latest release tag and provides a regular expression to validate the format of the new tag.
3. Tagging the new release: Once a valid new tag is entered, the script tags the new release.
4. Pushing the new tag to the remote: Finally, the script pushes the new tag to the remote repository. From here, you will need to create a new release in GitHub and users can easily reference the new tag in their workflows.