Actions FAQs

[Akash1134]

🚢 GitHub Actions helps you automate your software development workflows from within GitHub.

We want to make it easier for you to find the information you need quickly and accurately. The list of FAQs below includes some of the common questions that users ask in the community or might have on top of their minds while using GitHub Actions.

If you don’t see your question or want to share any feedback, please feel free to post it in the community. This post will be updated from time to time to best serve its purpose.

What are Runners and how do I decide which one I should use?

A runner consists of the machine (Virtual Machine + Hardware) and runner application on which Actions jobs run (see documentation).

Runners can be either hosted and managed by GitHub or Self-Hosted by the user on their own infrastructure. Read the difference between the two here.

GitHub also offers Large hosted runners with more RAM and CPU, a feature currently in beta for organizations and enterprises using the GitHub Team or GitHub Enterprise Cloud plans.

There is comprehensive documentation available to help you decide the best runner for your use case.

How can I create an Action and version it?

Actions are reusable pieces of code created with Javascript or Docker containers. In general, Javascript is more portable because it can run on Linux/Mac/Windows whereas Docker can only run on Linux VMs.

You can easily try out the features of GitHub Actions with this quick start guide and create your own action in less than 5 minutes.

You can also make use of thousands of community-powered Actions from the GitHub Marketplace where many of the Actions are officially maintained by GitHub. Actions with blue checkmarks are from verified creators, which means they have been created and maintained by a GitHub technology partner, in close collaboration with the GitHub team.

For versioning your Action, please check out this guide for more information.

Actions have stopped working for me or they are running intermittently. What do I do?

We update our status page in case of an ongoing issue or incident. If you see an open incident, this means that we are looking into it already. If not, please ask the GitHub community or contact Support.

I want to learn more about GitHub Action. Where do I get started?

We have crafted learning paths that are a collection of guides that help you get started with GitHub Actions.

What are the usage and spending limits for GitHub Actions?

You can easily stay on top of your GitHub Actions usage and spending limits.

How can I migrate to GitHub Actions from a different tool?

GitHub Actions Importer helps plan, forecast, and automate the migration of Azure DevOps, CircleCI, GitLab, Jenkins, and Travis CI pipelines to GitHub Actions. Head over to the GitHub documentation to learn how to get started with GitHub Actions Importer.

How do I monitor and troubleshoot my Action workflows?

You can use the tools in GitHub Actions to monitor and troubleshoot your workflows. While troubleshooting your workflows, if the workflow logs do not provide enough detail to diagnose why a workflow, job, or step is not working as expected, you can enable additional debug logging.

What is GitHub Actions on Mobile?

Actions on Mobile allows you to stay on top of the Actions status (like view workflow runs, pull request checks, re-running Actions and viewing logs) and take basic action based on this information (like re-run and cancel). For details, see this detailed blog post

GitHub Action is stuck in the queue. What should I do?

• First, please check the service status page to ensure there is no ongoing incident. If you see an open incident, wait for the incident to resolve.
• Please make sure your runs-on is valid (e.g. it should be ubuntu-latest, not ubuntu). You can specify the type of runner that will process the job, such as ubuntu-latest, windows-latest, or macos-latest. For the full list of runner types, see Supported runners and hardware resources.
• If it doesn’t help, please ask the GitHub community or contact Support.

How do I know which Actions are available to use?

Many of the Actions officially maintained by GitHub are located in the https://github.com/actions repo. There are also thousands of community-powered Actions that are discoverable from the GitHub Marketplace. Actions with blue checkmarks ✔️ are from verified creators, which means they have been created and maintained by a GitHub technology partner, in close collaboration with the GitHub team.

I want to enable GitHub Actions for my organization. Where do I get started?

To plan your adoption and make decisions about how your enterprise will use GitHub Actions to best support your unique needs, see how you can plan to roll out GitHub Actions in your enterprise. For more information and to get started, check out this documentation.

[jsoref]

GitHub Actions Importer helps plan, forecast, and automate the migration of Azure DevOps, CircleCI, GitLab, Jenkins, and Travis CI pipelines to GitHub Actions. Note that GitHub Actions Importer is currently available as a public preview. Visit the sign up page to request access to the preview.

This needs to be updated as actions-importer is GA.

[Akash1134]

Awesome! and thanks for sharing this @jsoref . I'll update the FAQ to remove the "sign up" request for accessing preview phrase.

[jsoref]

If you're going to update this, could you also fix:

Actions are reusable pieces of code created with Javascript or Docker containers.

1. JavaScript should be constantly written as such
2. It's also possible to write "composite" actions.
   For instance, my check-spelling action is a composite action that currently uses neither Docker nor JavaScript, but will tell you how to spell JavaScript 😉

[ChidiChuks]

Well said @Akash1134

[dkfellows]

How do we contact Support about problems with standard Actions runners (such as the ongoing random networking issues since the beginning of 2023)? The Support page appears to not consider that there might be reportable problems with Actions there and so just leads back here.

[jsoref]

The support site is an ever changing maze intended as a gatekeeper to prevent people from filing tickets.

That said, the actual URL entrypoint doesn't seem to have changed in ages:
https://support.github.com/contact/bug-report

In principle, they want you to walk through the maze.

For me, this morning, on mobile, that's:

1. https://support.github.com/
2. ≡
3. My Tickets
4. New ticket
5. 🪲Report a bug

[dkfellows]

That support site reminds me of how IT's ticketing system at my work used to be. It's not a compliment!

[jsoref]

On the bright side, it improved?

[GhostAbhi4413]

yes

[rafaelfronza]

Just checked the documentation and in this part https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-workflows/workflow-syntax-for-github-actions#example-using-contexts should the "run" command be like:
run: 'echo "This event is a pull request that had an assignee removed."'

I dunno if this is the correct place to ask this. Sorry.

[jsoref]

@rafaelfronza: you should create your own top level discussion. The 's you have aren't necessary, but they aren't problematic either.

[ElmiraOn]

I have a question about the events. I understand that we define the event that triggers the action in the workflow file but is there any way to limit and check what event was triggered in the action repo itself?

Thanks!

[jsoref]

?

I don't understand.

Events happen period
They're dispatched to things configured to listen to them and not to things not configured to listen to them.

If you want, you can log all the properties of the events you receive.

[devafortun]

Runners: These are the machines (either hosted by GitHub or self-hosted) where your actions run. You can choose between GitHub-hosted runners, which are managed by GitHub, or self-hosted runners that you manage on your own infrastructure.
Actions: These are individual tasks that can be combined to form jobs within a workflow. Actions can be created using JavaScript or Docker containers.
Workflows: Defined in YAML files, workflows specify the automation tasks to be executed in response to certain events (like code pushes)

[devafortun]

Okay, cool