Generate man pages workflow (FiloSottile/age)

The Generate man pages workflow from FiloSottile/age, explained and optimized by Latchkey.

CI health: C - fair

Point runs-on at Latchkey and get run de-duplication, job timeouts, SHA-pinned actions, self-healing for flaky steps, and up to 58% lower cost, applied automatically.

Grade your own workflow free or run it on Latchkey →

Source: FiloSottile/age.github/workflows/ronn.ymlLicense BSD-3-ClauseView source

What it does

This is the Generate man pages workflow from the FiloSottile/age repository, a real project running GitHub Actions. It is shown here with attribution under its BSD-3-Clause license.

Below, Latchkey shows a faster, safer version produced by its optimization engine.

The workflow

workflow (.yml)

name: Generate man pages
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - '**'
    paths:
      - '**.ronn'
      - '**/ronn.yml'
permissions:
  contents: read
jobs:
  ronn:
    name: Ronn
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5
        with:
          persist-credentials: false
      - uses: geomys/sandboxed-step@v1.2.1
        with:
          persist-workspace-changes: true
          run: |
            sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y ronn
            bash -O globstar -c 'ronn **/*.ronn'
            # rdiscount randomizes the output for no good reason, which causes
            # changes to always get committed. Sigh.
            # https://github.com/davidfstr/rdiscount/blob/6b1471ec3/ext/generate.c#L781-L795
            for f in doc/*.html; do
              awk '/Filippo Valsorda/ { $0 = "<p>Filippo Valsorda <a href=\"mailto:age@filippo.io\" data-bare-link=\"true\">age@filippo.io</a></p>" } { print }' "$f" > "$f.tmp"
              mv "$f.tmp" "$f"
            done
      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: man-pages
          path: |
            doc/*.1
            doc/*.html
  commit:
    name: Commit changes
    needs: ronn
    permissions:
      contents: write
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5
        with:
          persist-credentials: true
      - uses: actions/download-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: man-pages
          path: doc/
      - name: Commit and push if changed
        run: |-
          git config user.name "GitHub Actions"
          git config user.email "actions@users.noreply.github.com"
          git add doc/
          git commit -m "doc: regenerate groff and html man pages" || exit 0
          git push

The same workflow, on Latchkey

Removes redundant runs and caps runaway jobs. Added and changed lines are highlighted.

name: Generate man pages
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - '**'
    paths:
      - '**.ronn'
      - '**/ronn.yml'
permissions:
  contents: read
concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true
 
jobs:
  ronn:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    name: Ronn
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5
        with:
          persist-credentials: false
      - uses: geomys/sandboxed-step@v1.2.1
        with:
          persist-workspace-changes: true
          run: |
            sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y ronn
            bash -O globstar -c 'ronn **/*.ronn'
            # rdiscount randomizes the output for no good reason, which causes
            # changes to always get committed. Sigh.
            # https://github.com/davidfstr/rdiscount/blob/6b1471ec3/ext/generate.c#L781-L795
            for f in doc/*.html; do
              awk '/Filippo Valsorda/ { $0 = "<p>Filippo Valsorda <a href=\"mailto:age@filippo.io\" data-bare-link=\"true\">age@filippo.io</a></p>" } { print }' "$f" > "$f.tmp"
              mv "$f.tmp" "$f"
            done
      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: man-pages
          path: |
            doc/*.1
            doc/*.html
  commit:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    name: Commit changes
    needs: ronn
    permissions:
      contents: write
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5
        with:
          persist-credentials: true
      - uses: actions/download-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: man-pages
          path: doc/
      - name: Commit and push if changed
        run: |-
          git config user.name "GitHub Actions"
          git config user.email "actions@users.noreply.github.com"
          git add doc/
          git commit -m "doc: regenerate groff and html man pages" || exit 0
          git push

What changed

Run on Latchkey managed runners with one line (runs-on), which apply the fixes below automatically and self-heal transient failures. This example uses latchkey-small; pick the runner size that fits the job.
Cancel superseded runs when a branch or PR gets a newer push.
Add a job timeout so a hung step cannot burn hours of runner time.

1 third-party action is referenced by a movable tag. Pin it to the commit SHA (Latchkey resolves and applies this automatically) so a repointed tag cannot change what runs.

What Latchkey heals here

This workflow has steps that commonly fail on transient issues (network, registries, flaky browsers). On Latchkey managed runners they are detected, retried, and self-healed instead of failing your build:

Dependency installs

This workflow runs 2 jobs per trigger. On Latchkey the same minutes cost up to 58% less than GitHub-hosted, with zero queue time.

Actions used in this workflow

actions/checkout actions/upload-artifact actions/download-artifact