GitHub Actions 101: Deep Dive into Workflow Attributes

Beginner Series to Automating your Workflow with GitHub Actions! Part 2: Useful Attributes to Know

Hello and welcome to Part 2 of the GitHub Actions series. A series where we will walk through everything you need to know about GitHub Actions, from the basics to creating your own customized workflow.

If you have missed Part 1, please read it here before proceeding to Part 2.

In this part, let’s dive deeper into some attributes and useful things you need to know to customize a good workflow.

Job dependencies

Recap: Each workflow must have 1 job, each job has a unique identifier, they run in parallel by default.

As discussed in the previous part of this series, jobs are executed in parallel by default. In the example below, job1 and job2 will be run simultaneously.

jobs:
   job1: # unique identifier
      # job stuff here

   job2: # unique identifier
      # job stuff here

However, using the needs attribute, we can ensure certain jobs to run based on another job.

Let’s take a look at an example:

jobs:
  job1:
  job2:
    needs: job1
  job3:
    needs…