abc

Simply your build actions with Apt, Brew, and Choco dependencies in one action. Easy as ABC!

Motivation

Setting up a GitHub Action to build your project is fairly easy. One of the most useful tools for a cross-platform build job is GitHub Actions's job.strategy.matrix, which allows you to run the same build steps on multiple platforms. However, if you have platform-specific dependencies, it can be a pain to manage, as you have to add a new action for each platform, and check the runner's platform in each step ( Here are some examples of this in the wild ). This conflicts with the goal of having a single build step that runs on all platforms. Enter abc, a simple build action that automates the process of adding platform-specific dependencies to your build via apt, brew, and choco. Let's make platform-specific dependencies easy as ABC!

Getting Started

Add a lyricwulf/abc step to your job to install dependencies:

- uses: lyricwulf/abc@v1
  with: 
    linux: libfoo
    macos: mac-lib
    windows: win-lib

Specify multiple dependencies in one line:

  with: 
    linux: libfoo libbar libbaz

Specify dependencies for Unix-like or all platforms:

libfoo and libbar are installed for MacOS and Linux. libbaz and liblyric are installed for Linux, Windows, and MacOS.

  with:
    unix: libfoo libbar
    all: libbaz liblyric

Specify package version:

Target a specific version of a dependency using @ and a version constraint.

  with:
    linux: [email protected]
    macos: [email protected]
    windows: [email protected]

Example Use

Write cross platform jobs using job.strategy.matrix and abc:

jobs:
  foo:
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    strategy:
      matrix:
        include: 
          - os: windows-latest
          - os: macos-latest
          - os: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: lyricwulf/abc@v1
        with:
          windows: lib-from-choco
          macos: lib-from-brew
          linux: libfoo

Contributing

Any and all contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or a pull request.

Todo

• Add automatic dependency caching

This feature would require this action to be re-written as a node action since we cannot use actions/cache for composite actions. This is a GitHub Actions limitation.