playpen

A comprehensive playground repository demonstrating GitHub Actions workflows, CI/CD patterns, automation best practices, and real-world applications.

🚀 Workflows

Hello World

File: .github/workflows/hello-world.yml

A feature-rich workflow demonstrating:

• ✨ Workflow dispatch inputs - Customize OS selection, messages, and deployment
• 📊 Matrix builds - Runs on Ubuntu, macOS, and Windows
• ⚡ Performance metrics - Tracks execution time for each job
• 📦 Artifacts - Creates, uploads, and combines greetings from all platforms
• 🔒 Attestation - Signs artifacts with build provenance
• 💬 PR comments - Posts results to pull requests automatically
• 💾 Caching - Demonstrates cache usage patterns
• 🚀 Deployment - Manual approval gate with production environment
• ❌ Failure notifications - Alerts when workflows fail

Triggers:

• Push to main
• Pull requests
• Manual (with custom inputs)
• Schedule (weekly on Sundays)

Release

File: .github/workflows/release.yml

Automated release workflow:

• 🏗️ Multi-platform builds - Creates artifacts for Linux, macOS, and Windows
• 📝 Auto-generated release notes - Includes changelog from commits
• 📦 Asset uploads - Attaches build artifacts to GitHub releases
• 💬 Discussion creation - Announces releases in GitHub Discussions
• 🎯 Tag-triggered - Runs automatically on version tags (v*.*.*)
• 🎛️ Manual option - Can also be triggered manually with custom tags

Triggers:

• Push tags (v*.*.*)
• Manual (with custom tag input)

Test & Quality

File: .github/workflows/test-quality.yml

Comprehensive quality assurance:

• 🔍 Linting - Black, isort, flake8, pylint, yamllint
• 🧪 Testing - pytest across multiple Python versions (Ubuntu and macOS)
• 📊 Coverage - Generates and uploads coverage reports
• PR feedback - Posts test results and coverage to pull requests

Triggers:

• Push to main
• Pull requests
• Manual
• Schedule (weekly on Mondays)

Maintenance

File: .github/workflows/maintenance.yml

Automated repository maintenance:

• 🧹 Artifact cleanup - Removes old artifacts (configurable age)
• 💾 Cache cleanup - Clears unused caches to free storage
• 🌿 Stale branch detection - Reports branches with no recent activity
• 🔍 Dependency audit - Security checks for Python dependencies
• 🎛️ Configurable - Manual trigger with custom cleanup settings

Triggers:

• Schedule (weekly on Sundays at 3 AM UTC)
• Manual (with cleanup options)

🤖 Dependabot

File: .github/dependabot.yml

Automated dependency updates:

• 📦 GitHub Actions - Weekly updates for workflow actions
• 🐍 Python packages - Weekly updates for Python dependencies
• 🏷️ Auto-labeling - Tags PRs with appropriate labels
• 👥 Auto-assignment - Assigns updates to maintainers
• 📦 Grouped updates - Combines minor and patch updates

🎯 Features Demonstrated

Workflow Patterns

• ✅ Matrix builds across multiple OS and versions
• ✅ Job dependencies and data flow
• ✅ Conditional job execution
• ✅ Manual approval gates with environments
• ✅ Reusable outputs between jobs
• ✅ Concurrency control
• ✅ Timeout management

Artifacts & Caching

• ✅ Artifact creation and upload
• ✅ Multi-job artifact downloads
• ✅ Artifact attestation and signing
• ✅ Cache usage patterns
• ✅ Automated cleanup strategies

GitHub Integration

• ✅ GitHub API via github-script
• ✅ PR comments and feedback
• ✅ Status checks and summaries
• ✅ Release automation
• ✅ Discussion creation

Best Practices

• ✅ Minimal permissions (least privilege)
• ✅ Dependency management (Dependabot)
• ✅ Dependency security audit (pip-audit)
• ✅ Performance tracking
• ✅ Comprehensive logging
• ✅ Error handling and notifications
• ✅ Node.js 24 compatibility

🛠️ Usage

Manual Workflow Triggers

All workflows support manual triggering with custom inputs:

1. Go to the Actions tab
2. Select a workflow from the left sidebar
3. Click Run workflow button
4. Configure inputs (if available)
5. Click Run workflow to start

Creating a Release

# Tag a new version
git tag v1.0.0
git push origin v1.0.0

# The release workflow will automatically:
# - Build artifacts for all platforms
# - Create a GitHub release with notes
# - Upload build artifacts
# - Create a discussion announcement

Environment Setup (for deployment)

To use the deployment job with manual approval:

1. Go to Settings → Environments
2. Create a new environment named production
3. Add required reviewers
4. Configure protection rules as needed

📚 Learning Resources

This repository demonstrates patterns from:

• GitHub Actions Documentation
• Workflow syntax
• GitHub Script action
• Dependabot

📝 License

This is a playground repository for learning and experimentation.