act cplee.org

Use this command to install act:

winget install --id=nektos.act -e

Run your GitHub Actions locally!

act is a tool designed to run GitHub Actions locally, enabling developers to test workflows without pushing changes to remote repositories. This provides fast feedback during workflow development and allows for seamless testing of actions in an environment identical to GitHub's infrastructure.

Key Features:

Local Workflow Execution: Run GitHub Actions defined in .github/workflows/ directly on your machine, simulating the exact environment provided by GitHub.
Fast Feedback Loop: Test changes instantly without waiting for remote execution, accelerating development and debugging.
Task Automation: Use GitHub Actions as a replacement for traditional task runners like make, enabling consistent workflows across environments.
Integration with VS Code: Leverage the GitHub Local Actions extension to manage and run workflows directly from your editor.
Cross-Platform Support: Works seamlessly on Windows, macOS, and Linux, ensuring consistency across development environments.
Community Contributions: Benefits from an active open-source community contributing improvements and new features.

Audience & Benefit:

Ideal for developers and teams working with GitHub Actions to streamline workflow testing and automation. By running actions locally, users gain faster iteration cycles, reduced reliance on remote execution, and the ability to integrate workflows into their existing development tooling. act is particularly valuable for those seeking to enhance productivity and maintain consistency between local and remote workflow executions.

act can be installed via winget, making it easy to incorporate into your development environment.

Overview

> "Think globally, act locally"

Run your GitHub Actions locally! Why would you want to do this? Two reasons:

Fast Feedback - Rather than having to commit/push every time you want to test out the changes you are making to your .github/workflows/ files (or for any changes to embedded GitHub actions), you can use act to run the actions locally. The environment variables and filesystem are all configured to match what GitHub provides.
Local Task Runner - I love make. However, I also hate repeating myself. With act, you can use the GitHub Actions defined in your .github/workflows/ to replace your Makefile!

> [!TIP] > Now Manage and Run Act Directly From VS Code! > Check out the GitHub Local Actions Visual Studio Code extension which allows you to leverage the power of act to run and test workflows locally without leaving your editor.

How Does It Work?

When you run act it reads in your GitHub Actions from .github/workflows/ and determines the set of actions that need to be run. It uses the Docker API to either pull or build the necessary images, as defined in your workflow files and finally determines the execution path based on the dependencies that were defined. Once it has the execution path, it then uses the Docker API to run containers for each action based on the images prepared earlier. The environment variables and are all configured to match what GitHub provides.

act cplee.org

README

Overview

How Does It Work?

Act User Guide

Support

Contributing

Manually building from source