Hello CI World

Last updated on 2025-07-17 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • How do I run a simple GitHub Actions job?

Objectives

  • Add CI/CD to your project.

Now, we will be adding a GitHub Actions YAML file to a repository. This is all we will need to run CI using GitHub Actions.

If you haven’t already, use the Setup instructions to get the example intersect-training-cicd repository setup locally and remotely in GitHub.

Adding CI/CD to a project


The first thing we’ll do is create a .github/workflows/main.yml file in the project.

BASH

cd intersect-training-cicd
mkdir -p .github/workflows

Open .github/workflows/main.yml with your favorite editor and add the following

YAML

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

Run GitHub Actions


We’ve created the .github/workflows/main.yml file but it’s not yet on GitHub. Next step we’ll push these changes to GitHub so that it can run our job. Since we’re adding a new feature (adding CI) to our project, we’ll work in a feature branch.

BASH

git checkout -b add-ci
git add .github/workflows/main.yml
git commit -m "Adds initial GitHub Actions for CI"
git push --set-upstream origin add-ci

And that’s it! You’ve successfully run your CI job and you can view the output. You just have to navigate to the GitHub webpage for the intersect-training-cicd project and hit Actions button. There, you will find details of your job (status, output,…).

where to find the github actions button
GitHub Actions page

From this page, click through until you can find the output for the successful job run which should look like the following

how to see the output of a job run via Github Actions
GitHub Actions page part 2

Pull Request


Lastly, we’ll open up a pull request for this branch, since we plan to merge this back into main when we’re happy with the first iteration of the Actions.

Displays the screen for creating a pull request
Pull Request

See the beauty of the passing CI checks for your pull request!

Displays the screen after the jobs have run on a created pull request
Pull Request
Callout

Don’t merge yet!

We will just continue this Pull Request as we continue. Don’t merge into main yet.

Key Points
  • Creating .github/workflows/main.yml is the first step to CI/CD.
  • Pipelines are made of jobs with steps.