Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 10 min

Questions

• How do I setup CI for a Python package in GitHub Actions?

Objectives

• Learn about the Actions for GitHub Actions

• Learn basic setup for Python package GitHub Actions

Setup Python project

For this episode, we will be using some of the material from the INTERSECT packaging carpentry

Setup CI

Now we will switch from setting up a general CI pipeline to more specifically setting up CI for our Python package needs.

But first…

Activity: What do we need in CI for a Python package project?

What are some of the things we want to automate checks for in CI for a Python Package?

What tools accomplish these checks?

Solution

Just some suggestions (not comprehensive):

• Testing passes (pytest for unit testing or nox for parallel Python environment testing)
• Code is of quality (i.e. ruff or flake8 for linting or mccabe for reducing cyclomatic complexity
• Code conforms to project formatting guide (i.e. black for formatting)
• Code testing coverage does not drop significanly (i.e. pytest-cov or Coverage.py)
• Static type checking (i.e. mypy )
• Documentation builds (i.e. sphinx )
• Security vulnerabilities (i.e. bandit)

CI development

When you are first starting out setting up CI, don’t feel you need to add all the checks at the beginning of a project. First, pick the ones that are “must haves” or easier to implement. Then, iteratively improve your pipeline.

Setup Python environment in CI

As of right now, your .github/workflows/main.yml YAML file should look like

name: Code Checks
on: push
jobs:
  greeting:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Greeting!
        run: echo hello world

Overall, we will want to get our CI to run our unit tests via pytest. But first, let’s figure out how to setup a Python environment.

Let’s change the name from example to Code Checks to better reflect what we will be doing.

We will add another job (named test-python-3-10) and add the steps to setup a Python 3.10 environment to our YAML file:

name: Code Checks
on: push
jobs:
  greeting:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Greeting!
        run: echo hello world

  test-python-3-10:
    name: Check Python 3.10 on Ubuntu
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - uses: actions/setup-python@v4
        with:
          python-version: "3.10"

You might be asking: “What is going on with the uses command?”

Here, we are using what GitHub calls “Actions”. These are custom applications that, quoted from the documation link above, “…performs a complex but frequently repeated task.”

Second, you might ask: “Okay… but what is it doing?”

We won’t go into too much detail but mainly, actions/checkout@v3 checks out your code. This one is used all the time.

GitHub Acions Marketplace

GitHub has what they call a “Marketplace” for “Actions” where you can search for reusable tasks.

There is a Marketplace page for actions/checkout (Marketplace page]) and also a GitHub repository for the source code (GitHub).

The @v3 in actions/checkout@v3 signifies which version of the actions/checkout to use.

So…

Activity: What does the setup-python Action do?

What do you think the actions/setup-python does?

Can you find the Marketplace page for actions/setup-python?

Can you find the GitHub repository for actions/setup-python?

Bonus: Can you find a file in the GitHub repo that gives you all the with options?

Solution

• This action helps install a version of Python along with other options
• Marketplace: https://github.com/marketplace/actions/setup-python
• GitHub repository: https://github.com/actions/setup-python
• Bonus: This will be in the actions.yml. Here is the @v4 version of actions.yml: link.

Running your unit tests via CI

We now have our Python environment setup in CI. Let’s add running our tests!

name: Code Checks
on: push
jobs:
  greeting:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Greeting!
        run: echo hello world

  test-python-3-10:
    name: Check Python 3.10 on Ubuntu
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - uses: actions/setup-python@v4
        with:
          python-version: "3.10"

      - name: Install package
        run: python -m pip install -e .[test]

      - name: Test package
        run: python -m pytest

We see that we are installing our Python package with the test dependencies and then running pytest, just like we would locally.

Let’s push it and see our new CI for Python!

git add .github/workflows/main.yml
git commit -m "Adds Python 3.10 test to CI"
git push

Checkout the results! We see that we now have two jobs running!:

We can see the output / results from running pytest:

Similarly, we see our open Pull Request has updated dynamically with updates!

Activity: Running multiple jobs

Did the jobs run in sequence or in parallel?

Solution

Parallel. We will discuss this more when we get to the CD section.

Key Points

• GitHub has a Marketplace of reusable Actions

• CI can help automated running tests for code changes to your Python package