GitHub GitHub-Actions - GitHub Actions Certificate Exam

Searching the GitHub Marketplace for verified actions published by the cloud provider is the quickest and safest approach. Many cloud providers offer verified GitHub Actions that are maintained and optimized to interact with their services. These actions typically come with the correct configurations and best practices, allowing you to get started quickly without reinventing the wheel.

Setting a debug message using ::debug:: command sends a message to the logs, helping with troubleshooting and providing insight into the workflow run.

Setting output parameters using ::set-output sends data from a job step to subsequent steps or jobs, which can be used later in the workflow.

The workflow_call event is used to trigger a reusable workflow from another workflow. This allows you to create workflows that can be reused in multiple places within your organization, enabling better modularity and reducing duplication.

Workflow commands are special commands that allow you to interact with the runner, set environment variables, output values, add debug messages, and perform other tasks within the workflow. These commands are used to modify the environment or influence the behavior of the GitHub Actions runner.

While Docker can run on various operating systems, Linux is often the most common and preferred OS for containerized workloads. Docker works well on Linux and is a widely-used platform for running containers.

For container jobs to run on a self-hosted runner, Docker must be installed and properly configured on the runner. Docker is required to build and run containerized workloads in a GitHub Actions workflow.

Since the self-hosted runner is configured on a Linux VM and the script is written in PowerShell, you can invoke the script using the pwsh (PowerShell Core) shell in a run step in the workflow. This ensures that the script runs as-is on the Linux runner, as PowerShell Core (pwsh) is cross-platform and supports Linux.

You can enable specific actions for the organization by identifying them and providing version control, ensuring only trusted versions are used in workflows.

GitHub-verified actions can be enabled at the enterprise level, providing an extra layer of security by ensuring that only trusted actions are available to workflows.

Actions can be published to an internal marketplace, allowing organizations to share reusable actions securely within their enterprise without exposing them to the public.

The GITHUB_REPOSITORY environment variable contains the owner and repository name in the format owner/repository. It is automatically provided by GitHub Actions and can be used to reference the repository in workflows.

The publish-npm job includes the JS-DevTools/npm-publish action, which is used to publish an npm package to an npm registry.

The publish-npm job has the needs: build directive, meaning it will only run after the build job successfully completes.

The smallest scope for an environment variable is within astep. Environment variables defined within a step are only accessible to that particular step, which makes it the smallest scope for a variable in a GitHub Actions workflow.