How to setup simple nightly build with Github Actions

Table of Contents

Intro

Github actions provide us with many features we can use, simple, and integrated with any platform. one useful feature is scheduling workflow. Github actions allow us to run workflow with cron scheduling. this will be useful when we want to create a scheduled workflow, for example here nightly build. here I want to share my experience “How to setup nightly build with GitHub actions.”

setup registry

here we would build the application into a docker image and push it to Github Container Registry. see here how to push docker image into docker hub.

the first thing we should create Github PAT (Personal Access Token) that allows us to give specific permission access to our Github account without an actual password. To generate Github PAT go to Settings > Developer settings > Personal access token and make sure you check this out.

for security purposes, I recommend you to pay attention to the least privilege principle. please give your PAT only the necessary scope. see helpful official documentation about Github PAT here.

after that store your Github PAT to Github secret to make sure all are encrypted securely. see how to create Github secrets.

Setup GitHub actions

this setup is very simple just build an image and push the image to the registry. this workflow uses official docker Github action. buildx and docker login.

In the first step, we should checkout the repository. next, we use buildx to build docker instance. This action will create and boot a builder that can be used in the following steps of your workflow if you’re using buildx. By default, the docker-container builder driver will be used to be able to build multi-platform images and export cache thanks to the BuildKit container third step, use docker login action to authenticate with Container Registry, here we use Github Container Registry. we should define with registry parameter with ghcr.io value. finally, build an image and push it into the registry. you can define a custom Dockerfile path or name.

you can check the container will be built nightly. to show your docker image go to profile > package. by default, the workflow would be run in UTC time zone. you should adapt to your time zone. for example, I’m in WIB Time Zone or equal to UTC+7 and I can write the cron-like this

name: "Nightly Build"

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 7 * * *"

sometime cron syntax quite confusing, i very recommended to use this website to create your cron.