Chapter 1: Learning the Foundations for GitHub Actions
Independently of your current level of expertise, by the time you have finished reading the last chapter in this book, you will have completed all the steps needed to implement a cohesive Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) workflow using GitHub Actions. You will also have familiarity with many other systems and practices that have helped GitHub Actions gain popularity in the software development and DevOps world.
Automation is the heart of most modern DevOps practices. Many tools have been created to allow for automated tests, builds, and deployment, and GitHub Actions is one of those tools. It is an elegant solution that offers the convenience of creating and managing CI and CD workflows from GitHub, the largest code-hosting platform in the world.
It is important to understand the basic concepts of CI and CD before creating and managing GitHub Actions workflows. It is also relevant to learn about some of the technologies that make GitHub Actions possible, such as GitHub—the platform where all GitHub Actions live— and YAML Ain't Markup Language, commonly known as YAML—the markup language that powers GitHub Actions workflows. In this chapter, you will learn more about the following topics:
- Understanding the basics of CI/CD
- Introduction to GitHub: creating a user account
- Discovering the basics of Git and GitHub
- Introducing YAML