Background¶

GitHub Actions Workflows are the core of GitHub CI/CD. You can set them up easily. VS Code has many extensions for GitHub. In this article, I will show how to create a simple GitHub Actions Workflow. It will help you understand the flow. Later using similar steps you can create complex Action Workflows. Let's get started.

Create an End-to-End GitHub Actions Workflow Using VS Code¶

Create a New Repository Using GitHub Desktop¶

Open GitHub Desktop. Click on New repository. Provide a name for your repository, check the local path, and click on Create repository.

Click on Publish repository. Then Click on Open in Visual Studio Code.

In the VS Code you will be able to see your folder .gitattributes file

Set Up the GitHub Actions Workflow in VS Code¶

Create Folder Structure:
In VS Code, click on the create folder icon and create a .github folder.
Inside the .github folder, create another folder named workflows.

Create Workflow File:
Inside the workflows folder, create a file named hello-github-actions.yml.

Add the following code to hello-github-actions.yml:

name: Hello GitHub Actions
on: [push]
jobs:
  say-hello:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Run hello.py
        run: python hello.py

Create a Python Script¶

In the root of your repository, create a new file named hello.py.
Add the following code to hello.py:
```
print("Hello, GitHub Actions!")
```

Commit and Push the Changes¶

Click on the source control icon in VS Code.
Uncomment or Write a commit message (e.g., "This is a message bla bla bla").
Click on Commit to commit the changes.
Click on Push to push the changes to GitHub. This will trigger the workflow.

Check the Workflow Execution¶

In VS Code, click on the GitHub Actions Extension in the left pane. This will show you the GitHub Actions Workflow that you created.
You can click on the globe icon to see the workflow directly on GitHub.

Summary¶

Well, this was a hand-holding article. You can do a lot more with GitHub Actions workflows.