A GitHub Actions action is a custom application that performs a reusable, repetitive task inside a workflow. Workflows respond to repository events, schedules, or manual triggers; jobs run on runners, and their steps execute sequentially. This lets an API team turn routine build and validation work into repeatable pipeline behavior. section 8.4
Use an action as one step in a configured workflow:
- Place the workflow YAML file in .github/workflows. section 8.4
- Trigger the workflow for events such as a pull request against main, or allow manual execution with workflow_dispatch. section 8.4
- Assign the job to a runner such as ubuntu-latest, then combine actions with shell-script steps. section 8.4
- Use actions/checkout@v3 to retrieve the pull-request branch and actions/setup-java@v3 to configure JDK 17 before compiling and testing. section 8.4
- Treat the resulting checks as pipeline controls: a quality gate prevents proposals from progressing until required criteria pass. section 8.6
PR build action steps
A pull-request workflow can define a job on ubuntu-latest, check out the code, set up Temurin JDK 17 with Maven caching, and run mvn --batch-mode clean compile followed by mvn --batch-mode test. Passing checks provide fast feedback before API governance review; teams may also add controls such as API linting, breaking-change checks, or client-SDK generation. section 8.4 section 8.6
Listing 8.1 The PR build workflow
name: PR build workflow
on:
pull_request:
branches: [main] #1
workflow_dispatch: #2
jobs:
pr-code-build: #3
name: Build and test source code
runs-on: ubuntu-latest #4
steps:
- name: Checkout out pr branch
uses: actions/checkout@v3 #5
- name: Set up JDK 17
uses: actions/setup-java@v3
with:
java-version: '17'
distribution: 'temurin'
cache: maven
- name: Compile
run: |
cd chapter8
mvn --batch-mode clean compile #6
- name: Unit test
run: |
cd chapter8
mvn --batch-mode test
Inspect the complete PR build workflow, including triggers, runner selection, reusable actions, Java configuration, compilation, and tests. section 8.4
