forgejo-docs/user/actions.md

layout	title	license	similar
~/layouts/Markdown.astro	Forgejo Actions user guide	CC-BY-SA-4.0	https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/docs/content/doc/usage/actions/faq.en-us.md https://docs.github.com/en/actions

Forgejo Actions provides Continuous Integration driven from the files in the .forgejo/workflows directory of a repository, with a web interface to show the results. The syntax and semantic of the workflow files will be familiar to people used to GitHub Actions but they are not and will never be identical.

The following guide explains key concepts to help understand how workflows are interpreted, with a set of examples that can be copy/pasted and modified to fit particular use cases.

Quick start

• Verify that Enable Repository Actions is checked in the Repository tab of the /{owner}/{repository}/settings page. If the checkbox does not show it means the administrator of the Forgejo instance did not activate the feature.
• Add the following to the .forgejo/workflows/demo.yaml file in the repository.

  on: [push]
  jobs:
    test:
      runs-on: docker
      steps:
        - run: echo All Good
  

  
• Go to the Actions tab of the /{owner}/{repository}/actions page of the repository to see the result of the run.
• Click on the workflow link to see the details and the job execution logs.

Concepts

Forgejo runner

Forgejo itself does not run the jobs, it relies on the Forgejo runner to do so. See the Forgejo Actions administrator guide for more information.

Actions

An Action is a repository that contains the equivalent of a function in any programming language, with inputs and outputs as desccribed in the action.yml file at the root of the repository (see this example).

One of the most commonly used action is checkout which clones the repository that triggered a workflow. Another one is setup-go that will install Go.

Just as any other program of function, an Action has pre-requisites to successfully be installed and run. When looking at re-using an existing Action, this is an important consideration. For instance setup-go depends on NodeJS during installation.

Caching commonly used files

When a job starts, it can communicate with the Forgejo runner to fetch commonly used files that were saved by previous runs. For instance the https://code.forgejo.org/actions/setup-go action will do that by default to save downloading and compiling packages found in go.mod.

It is also possible to explicitly control what is cached and when using the https://code.forgejo.org/actions/cache action.

Services

PostgreSQL, redis and other services can conveniently be run from container images with something similar to (see the full example):

services:
  pgsql:
    image: postgres:15
    env:
      POSTGRES_DB: test
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres
    ports:
      - '5432:5432'

A container with the specified image: is run before the job starts and is terminated when it completes. The job can address the service using its name, in this case pgsql.

The list of runners and their tasks

A Forgejo runner listens on a Forgejo instance, waiting for jobs. To figure out if a runner is available for a given repository, go to /{owner}/{repository}/settings/actions/runners. If there are none, you can run one for yourself on your laptop.

Some runners are Global and are available for every repository, others are only available for the repositories within a given user or organization. And there can even be runners dedicated to a single repository. The Forgejo administrator is the only one able to launch a Global runner. But the user who owns an organization can launch a runner without requiring any special permission. All they need to do is to get a runner registration token and install the runner on their own laptop or on a server of their choosing (see the Forgejo Actions administrator guide for more information).

Clicking on the pencil icon next to a runner shows the list of tasks it executed, with the status and a link to display the details of the execution.

The list of tasks in a repository

From the Actions tab in a repository, the list of ongoing and past tasks triggered by this repository is displayed with their status.

Following the link on a task displays the logs and the Re-run all jobs button. It is also possible to re-run a specific job by hovering on it and clicking on the arrows.

Tasks run from pull requests

The first time a user proposes a pull request, the task is blocked to reduce the security risks.

It can be Approved by a maintainer of the project and there will be no need to unblocker future pull requests.

Secrets

A repository, a user or an organization can hold secrets, a set of key/value pairs that are stored encrypted in the Forgejo database and revealed to the workflows as ${{ secrets.KEY }}. They can be defined from the web interface:

• in /org/{org}/settings/actions/secrets to be available in all the repositories that belong to the organization
• in /user/settings/actions/secrets to be available in all the repositories that belong to the logged in user
• in /{owner}/{repo}/settings/actions/secrets to be available to the workflows of a single repository

Once the secret is added, its value cannot be changed or displayed.

Workflow reference guide

The syntax and semantic of the YAML file describing a workflow are partially explained here. When an entry is missing the GitHub Actions documentation can help because there are similarities. But there also are significant differences that deserve testing.

on

Workflows will be triggered on certain events with the following:

on:
  <event-name>:
    <event-parameter>:
    ...

e.g. to run a workflow when branch main is pushed

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

trigger event	activity types
create	not applicable
delete	not applicable
fork	not applicable
gollum	not applicable
push	not applicable
issues	opened, edited, closed, reopened, assigned, unassigned, milestoned, demilestoned, labeled, unlabeled
issue_comment	created, edited, deleted
pull_request	opened, edited, closed, reopened, assigned, unassigned, synchronize, labeled, unlabeled
pull_request_review	submitted, edited
pull_request_review_comment	created, edited
release	published, edited
registry_package	published

Not everything from https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-workflows/events-that-trigger-workflows is implemented yet. Please refer to the forgejo/actions package source code and the list of webhook event names to find out about supported triggers.

env

Set environment variables that are available in the workflow in the env context and as regular environment variables.

env:
  KEY1: value1
  KEY2: value2

• The expression ${{ env.KEY1 }} will be evaluated to value1
• The environment variable KEY1 will be set to value1

Checkout the example.

jobs

runs-on

Each job in a workflow must specify the kind of machine it needs to run its steps with runs-on. For instance docker in the following workflow:

---
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: docker

means that the Forgejo runner that claims to provide a kind of machine labelled docker will be selected by Forgejo and sent the job to be run.

The actual machine provided by the runner entirely depends on how the Forgejo runner was registered (see the Forgejo Actions administrator guide for more information).

The list of available labels for a given repository can be seen in the /{owner}/{repo}/settings/actions/runners page.

Container

By default the docker label will create a container from a Node.js 16 Debian GNU/Linux bullseye image and will run each step as root. Since an application container is used, the jobs will inherit the limitations imposed by the engine (Docker for instance). In particular they will not be able to run or install software that depends on systemd.

If the default image is unsuitable, a job can specify an alternate container image with container:, as shown in this example. For instance the following will ensure the job is run using Alpine 3.18.

runs-on: docker
container:
  image: alpine:3.18

LXC

The runs-on: self-hosted label will run the jobs in a LXC container where software that rely on systemd can be installed. Nested containers can also be created recursively (see the setup-forgejo integration tests for an example).

Services are not supported for jobs that run on LXC.

steps

uses

Specifies the repository from which the Action will be cloned.

A relative Action such as uses: actions/checkout@v3 will clone the repository at the URL composed by prepending the default actions URL which is https://code.forgejo.org/. It is the equivalent of providing the fully qualified URL uses: https://code.forgejo.org/actions/checkout@v3. In other words the following:

on: [push]
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: docker
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

is the same as:

on: [push]
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: docker
    steps:
      - uses: https://code.forgejo.org/actions/checkout@v3

When possible it is strongly recommended to choose fully qualified URLs to avoid ambiguities. During installation, the `Forgejo' instance may use another default URL and a workflow could fail because it gets an outdated version from https://tooold.org/actions/checkout instead. Or even a repository that does not contain the intended action.

Debugging workflows with forgejo-runner exec

To get a quicker debug loop when working on a workflow, it may be more convenient to run them on your laptop using forgejo-runner exec. For instance:

$ git clone --depth 1 http://code.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner
$ cd runner
$ forgejo-runner exec --workflows .forgejo/workflows/test.yml --job lint
INFO[0000] Using default workflow event: push
INFO[0000] Planning job: lint
INFO[0000] cache handler listens on: http://192.168.1.20:44261
INFO[0000] Start server on http://192.168.1.20:34567
[checks/check and test] 🚀  Start image=node:16-bullseye
[checks/check and test]   🐳  docker pull image=node:16-bullseye platform= username= forcePull=false
[checks/check and test]   🐳  docker create image=node:16-bullseye platform= entrypoint=["/bin/sleep" "10800"] cmd=[]
[checks/check and test]   🐳  docker run image=node:16-bullseye platform= entrypoint=["/bin/sleep" "10800"] cmd=[]
[checks/check and test]   ☁  git clone 'https://code.forgejo.org/actions/setup-go' # ref=v3
[checks/check and test] ⭐ Run Main actions/setup-go@v3
[checks/check and test]   🐳  docker cp src=/home/loic/.cache/act/actions-setup-go@v3/ dst=/var/run/act/actions/actions-setup-go@v3/
...
|
| ==> Ok
|
[checks/check and test]   ✅  Success - Main test
[checks/check and test] ⭐ Run Post actions/setup-go@v3
[checks/check and test]   🐳  docker exec cmd=[node /var/run/act/actions/actions-setup-go@v3/dist/cache-save/index.js] user= workdir=
[checks/check and test]   ✅  Success - Post actions/setup-go@v3
[checks/check and test] Cleaning up services for job check and test
[checks/check and test] Cleaning up container for job check and test
[checks/check and test] Cleaning up network for job check and test, and network name is: FORGEJO-ACTIONS-TASK-push_WORKFLOW-checks_JOB-check-and-test-network
[checks/check and test] 🏁  Job succeeded

Examples

Each example is part of the setup-forgejo action test suite. They can be run locally with something similar to:

$ git clone --depth 1 http://code.forgejo.org/actions/setup-forgejo
$ cd setup-forgejo
$ forgejo-runner exec --workflows testdata/example-expression/.forgejo/workflows/test.yml
INFO[0000] Using the only detected workflow event: push
INFO[0000] Planning jobs for event: push
INFO[0000] cache handler listens on: http://192.168.1.20:43773
INFO[0000] Start server on http://192.168.1.20:34567
[test.yml/test] 🚀  Start image=node:16-bullseye
[test.yml/test]   🐳  docker pull image=node:16-bullseye platform= username= forcePull=false
[test.yml/test]   🐳  docker create image=node:16-bullseye platform= entrypoint=["/bin/sleep" "10800"] cmd=[]
[test.yml/test]   🐳  docker run image=node:16-bullseye platform= entrypoint=["/bin/sleep" "10800"] cmd=[]
[test.yml/test] ⭐ Run Main set -x
test "KEY1=value1" = "KEY1=value1"
test "KEY2=$KEY2" = "KEY2=value2"
[test.yml/test]   🐳  docker exec cmd=[bash --noprofile --norc -e -o pipefail /var/run/act/workflow/0] user= workdir=
| + test KEY1=value1 = KEY1=value1
| + test KEY2=value2 = KEY2=value2
[test.yml/test]   ✅  Success - Main set -x
test "KEY1=value1" = "KEY1=value1"
test "KEY2=$KEY2" = "KEY2=value2"
[test.yml/test] Cleaning up services for job test
[test.yml/test] Cleaning up container for job test
[test.yml/test] Cleaning up network for job test, and network name is: FORGEJO-ACTIONS-TASK-push_WORKFLOW-test-yml_JOB-test-network
[test.yml/test] 🏁  Job succeeded

• Expression - a collection of various forms of expression
• Echo - a single step that prints one sentence.
• PostgreSQL service - a PostgreSQL service and a connection to display the (empty) list of tables of the default database.
• Choosing the image with container - replacing the runs-on: docker image with the alpine:3.18 image using container:.

Glossary

• workflow or task: a file in the .forgejo/workflows directory that contains jobs.
• job: a sequential set of steps.
• step: a command the runner is required to carry out.
• action: a repository that can be used in a way similar to a function in any programming language to run a single step.
• runner: the Forgejo runner daemon tasked to execute the workflows.
• label the kind of machine that is matched against the value of runs-on in a workflow.