I'm currently working on the improvement of the wallabag-kindle-consumer service. Since the original repository hasn't been maintained, I decided to fork it. My first goal was to have an initial dev version (0.1.0) and a Docker image published on ghcr.io. Additionally, I wanted to automate the tag creation, the release of the service, and the process of building and publishing the Docker image using GitHub Actions.
I watched a couple of YouTube videos (I'll leave the links at the end of the article) and read GitHub Actions documentation, but the resources showed how to use different GitHub Actions separately and didn't combine them. After many tries, I finally managed to do it. I decided to write this article to show how I accomplished it, and hopefully, it can help others who want to do the same but don't know where to start.
Step 1 - Create a Personal Access Token (PAT)on GitHub. Make sure to select the repo
and write:packages
scopes.
Step 2 - Add the created PAT
in the repository's secrets:
In the repository's page, navigate to:
-
Settings
>>Secrets and variables
>>Actions
>> click inNew repository secret
and paste the created token.
Step 3 - Grant read and write permissions to GitHub Actions:
In the repository's page, navigate to:
-
Settings
>>Actions
>>General
>> Scroll to the end of the page to findWorkflow permissions
, then selectRead and write permissions
.
These steps are necessary because when using GitHub Actions, the workflows automatically create a GITHUB_TOKEN
, which is available as an environment variable within every GitHub Actions workflow. However, this token lacks the specific permissions we need in this case. By using the PAT
, we can trigger subsequent workflows, such as building and publishing the Docker image after tag creation and release.
Step 4 - Create workflows using the following actions:
For automating releases based on conventional commits, I used the google-github-actions/release-please-action@v3.
For the Docker image workflow, I used:
- docker/login-action@v2 to login against a Docker registry.
- docker/metadata-action@v4 to extract metadata (tags, labels) from Git reference and GitHub events for Docker.
- docker/build-push-action@v4 to build and push Docker images with Buildx.
First workflow file (relese-please.yml
):
yaml
name: release-please
on:
push:
branches:
- main
permissions:
contents: write
pull-requests: write
jobs:
release-please:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: release-please
id: release
uses: google-github-actions/release-please-action@v3
with:
release-type: simple
package-name: release
bump-minor-pre-major: true
bump-patch-for-minor-pre-major: true
token: ${{ secrets.PAT }}
Second workflow file (deploy.yml
):
yaml
name: build-docker-image
on:
push:
tags:
- 'v*'
env:
REGISTRY: ghcr.io
IMAGE_NAME: ${{ github.repository }}
jobs:
build-and-push-image:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
permissions:
contents: read
packages: write
steps:
- name: Checkout repository
uses: actions/checkout@v3
- name: Log in to the Container registry
uses: docker/login-action@v2
with:
registry: ${{ env.REGISTRY }}
username: ${{ github.actor }}
password: ${{ secrets.PAT }}
- name: Extract metadata (tags, labels) for Docker
id: meta
uses: docker/metadata-action@v4
with:
images: ${{ env.REGISTRY }}/${{ env.IMAGE_NAME }}
tags: |
type=semver,pattern={{version}}
- name: Build and push Docker image
uses: docker/build-push-action@v4
with:
context: .
push: true
tags: ${{ steps.meta.outputs.tags }}
labels: ${{ steps.meta.outputs.labels }}
It's important to note that the first version of the release when using Release Please Action will be "1.0.0" by default. If you want "0.1.0" as initial version (like me), you can achieve this by creating an empty commit with the following command:
bash
git commit --allow-empty -m "chore: release 0.1.0" -m "Release-As: 0.1.0"{% raw %}`
```
This will create a pull request with the desired version. You can find more information in the [documentation](https://github.com/googleapis/release-please#how-do-i-change-the-version-number).
In summary, using these two workflows and a Personal Access Token, we can configure GitHub Actions to automate the tags creation, releases, and the process of building and publishing the Docker image.
Thanks to [@DevOpsJourney](https://www.youtube.com/@DevOpsJourney) for the [GitHub Packages.. Containers in a GitHub repo?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqseP_wTZsk) video and thanks to [@eddiejaoude](https://www.youtube.com/@eddiejaoude) for the [GitHub Actions can automate your releases from your git commit messages - conventional commits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcHJZ4pMzBs&t=319s) video.
Top comments (3)
Awesome article. Thank you for writing it
This is a very insightful article!
However, adding language tags helps improve your readers' reading experience. For example, the following code block looks better:
Just add
yaml
beside the opening quotes of the code block and you should have a colorized code block like the one above.Happy coding!
Thanks for the tip!! Glad you found this article interesting!