The latest articles on Forem by Jorge Barata (@neuralhacker). https://forem.com/neuralhacker https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F459302%2Fa2e6cc60-7e55-4bea-a90d-bbadbb34ba6d.png https://forem.com/neuralhacker en Jorge Barata Thu, 27 Aug 2020 17:58:02 +0000 https://forem.com/neuralhacker/stateful-action-4iga https://forem.com/neuralhacker/stateful-action-4iga <p>This is my entry for the <a href="https://dev.to/devteam/announcing-the-github-actions-hackathon-on-dev-3ljn">GitHub Actions Hackathon on DEV</a>:</p> <p><strong><a href="https://github.com/marketplace/actions/stateful-action">💾 Stateful Action</a></strong> persists the data into a <strong>branch</strong> after every run, letting the actions <strong>keep a state between runs</strong>.</p> <p>I use this utility to periodically run <strong>reports</strong>, <strong>crawlers</strong>, and <strong>bots</strong> that live entirely as a GitHub repository. They keep the state of the progress in a branch. Some of them store the information in a SQLite database file. I also the action for publishing the results in the GitHub pages branch.</p> <p>The action squashes the oldest commits, so the repository size doesn't grow wildly.</p> <h2> How does it work? </h2> <p>The action stores the information in a folder that is also a branch, using a git <a href="https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree">worktree</a>. </p> <p>It wraps the run like this:</p> <ol> <li> <code>state</code> branch is checked out as a <a href="https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree">worktree</a> under a folder named <code>.state</code> (which must be ignored by <code>.gitignore</code>). Please check <a href="//scripts/main.sh"><code>scripts/main.sh</code></a>.</li> <li>The application writes its state into the <code>.state</code> folder.</li> <li>Changes in <code>state</code> branch are commited and pushed to origin. Please check <a href="//scripts/post.sh"><code>scripts/post.sh</code></a>: <ul> <li>Changes are commited and pushed.</li> <li>Old commits on <code>state</code> branch are squashed and force-pushed.</li> <li> <code>.state</code> worktree is removed.</li> </ul> </li> </ol> <p>For more details, please check the <a href="https://github.com/jorgebg/stateful-action">repository</a>.</p> actionshackathon github