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Configuring GitHub Actions to Run Jobs on Specific Branches

Running jobs on specific branches with GitHub Actions is a common scenario implemented by DevOps and SRE professionals. This allows you to control which branches trigger specific jobs within your workflows. This can be important for maintaining efficient CI/CD processes, especially if you want tests to run on every branch while restricting deployment actions to only the main branch. This article explains how to configure several different methods of running GitHub Actions workflow jobs on specific branches in the repo.

GitHub Actions: Get Current Branch Name for Git Repo

How to get the current branch name in GitHub Actions can be useful for workflows that trigger off of multiple branches of a GitHub repository. The reason this can be useful is that the branch name may be important to mark or tag the code release in some way (i.e. tag a docker image), or maybe even vary the deployment of the code by environment. Regardless of the reason you need to get the name of the current Git repo branch, just rest assured that GitHub Actions does support retrieving it. This article explains the what is necessary to get the current Git repo branch name within a workflow.

GitHub Actions: Download File and Commit to Repository

A few times I’ve found the need to setup a GitHub Actions workflow that downloads a file and commits that file back to the repository. I had a need to pull in a JSON file and update it periodically to a GitHub repository. There are other scenarios where this may be needed. This article will show you the steps necessary to setup your own GitHub Actions workflow that does the same.

Configure Scheduled Trigger in GitHub Actions using Cron expression

There are many times when scheduled triggers are very useful when configuring GitHub Actions workflows. Luckily, GitHub Actions supports the ability to configure scheduled triggers that includes support for using cron expressions to define the schedule timing. In this article, we’ll look at configuring scheduled triggers on GitHub Actions workflows and a few tips on writing cron expressions.

GitHub Certifications – Prove Your Expertise

Keeping up with GitHub requires lots of skill mastery. GitHub is a platform used by over 100 million developers worldwide and offers a suite of certifications designed to elevate your development prowess and demonstrate your mastery of its powerful tools. Whether you’re a software developer, DevOps Engineer, SRE, security specialist, or IT professional, GitHub’s certifications cater to a diverse range of roles and skill levels.