How To Trigger Github Actions On Specific Branch Changes

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Find centralized, trusted content and collaborate around the technologies you use most. Bring the best of human thought and AI automation together at your work. You can configure your workflows to run when specific activity on GitHub happens, at a scheduled time, or when an event outside of GitHub occurs. Workflow triggers are events that cause a workflow to run. For more information about how to use workflow triggers, see Triggering a workflow. Some events have multiple activity types.

For these events, you can specify which activity types will trigger a workflow run. For more information about what each activity type means, see Webhook events and payloads. Not all webhook events trigger workflows. Runs your workflow when branch protection rules in the workflow repository are changed. For more information about branch protection rules, see About protected branches. For information about the branch protection rule APIs, see Objects in the GraphQL API documentation or REST API endpoints for branches and their settings.

Running jobs on specific branches with GitHub Actions is a common scenario implemented by DevOps and SRE professionals. This allows you to control which branches trigger specific jobs within your workflows. This can be important for maintaining efficient CI/CD processes, especially if you want tests to run on every branch while restricting deployment actions to only the main branch. This article explains how to configure several different methods of running GitHub Actions workflow jobs on specific branches in the repo. One of the key features of GitHub Actions is the ability to fine-tune when and where your workflows run by setting up branch-specific triggers. This functionality helps with maintaining an organized and efficient CI/CD pipeline, as it allows you to control the execution of workflows based on the branch involved in the event.

Whether you’re pushing code, creating pull requests, or merging branches, you can define rules that determine which branches should trigger specific workflows. Branch-specific triggers provide several benefits: Filtering workflows to run only on specific branches is a fundamental feature of GitHub Actions. This allows you to control when and where your workflows are triggered, ensuring that jobs only run in the intended branches. By doing so, you can maintain a clean, efficient CI/CD process tailored to your development needs. Branch filtering in GitHub Actions is configured using the branches keyword within the on field of your workflow YAML file.

This configuration dictates that the workflow should only trigger on specified branches. In today’s fast-paced development cycles, automating repetitive tasks like releases is critical to maintaining efficiency and reducing human error. GitHub Actions, a powerful CI/CD tool integrated directly with GitHub, allows you to automate workflows—including scheduled releases on specific branches. Whether you’re shipping weekly updates, monthly patches, or critical hotfixes, scheduling releases ensures consistency and frees up your team to focus on development. This guide will walk you through creating a GitHub Actions workflow that triggers automatically on a schedule for a specific branch, configuring the release process, testing the workflow, and troubleshooting common issues. By the end, you’ll have a robust, automated release pipeline tailored to your project’s needs.

GitHub Actions is a continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) platform built into GitHub. It lets you automate tasks like building, testing, and deploying code directly from your GitHub repository. Workflows are defined in YAML files stored in the .github/workflows directory of your repo, and they trigger based on events (e.g., pushes, pull requests, or schedules). Before you begin, ensure you have the following: To schedule a release, you’ll use the schedule trigger, which runs workflows at specified times using cron syntax. Additionally, you’ll need to target a specific branch to ensure releases only run from that branch (e.g., release/main).

Posted on Feb 3, 2021 • Edited on Mar 1, 2021 GitHub Actions allows you to automate, customize and execute your software development workflows inside your repository. You can configure your workflows to run when specific activity on GitHub happens, at a scheduled time, or when an event outside of GitHub occurs. The most common events are push and pull_request events to trigger workflow runs on any change to the main branch. The workflow will run for any pull request opened and show your workflows directly in the pull request. You want certain events to run on specific branches.

You adjust the YAML to include branch names to only run CI checks on branches you needed them. Below I have changed my events to run on the main branch, even though it is named the push. It will run when you run git push or merge a pull request into the main branch. GitHub Actions triggers are conditions that activate workflows in a repository. They are events prompting automation when certain actions occur in the project. Triggers rely on events, which can range from code pushes, pull requests, or scheduled times.

This automation simplifies repetitive tasks. The integration of triggers within GitHub’s CI/CD pipeline allows teams to create workflows aligned with their development practices. By defining actions that fire the workflows, project management and code quality can improve significantly. Understanding triggers is essential for utilizing GitHub Actions effectively and aligning automation strategies with project requirements. Events in GitHub Actions are actions such as pushing a commit or creating an issue. They act as signals for GitHub Actions workflows to start executing.

Events can originate from GitHub’s platform, be scheduled, or be defined by users for custom needs. Built-in events include the standard set of actions within GitHub, such as commits, pull requests, and releases. These predefined events are integral to the development process and are commonly used to automate testing, deployment, and other tasks. With built-in events, developers can create workflows that respond automatically to frequently occurring actions. Custom events allow users to define triggers tailored to unique project requirements. This flexibility ensures that teams can adapt GitHub Actions to meet their needs, optimizing their CI/CD processes while maintaining control over automation.

Creating custom events involves defining new triggers and configuring workflows to respond accordingly. GitHub Actions provide a powerful automation platform for workflows in your repository. Often, you might need to execute certain tasks or steps only on specific branches, such as the release- branch. Here, we’ll explore how to configure GitHub Actions to run specific steps exclusively on the release- branch using conditional expressions. With this setup, your GitHub Actions workflow will execute specific steps only when there is a push to a branch starting with release-. This approach allows you to run customized actions or tasks specifically on your release- branch, segregating tasks as needed and enhancing the automation of your repository workflow.

Feel free to modify the job name, steps, and commands within the workflow to suit your project’s requirements. GitHub Actions offer a robust way to automate various tasks and streamline your development processes, ensuring efficiency and control in your code deployment workflows. Try Speechify — the AI voice reader that helps DevOps engineers consume technical documentation while working in the terminal.

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