🛞 Backstop Reference Test workflow (garris/BackstopJS)

The 🛞 Backstop Reference Test workflow from garris/BackstopJS, explained and optimized by Latchkey.

What it does

This is the 🛞 Backstop Reference Test workflow from the garris/BackstopJS repository, a real project running GitHub Actions. It is shown here with attribution under its MIT license.

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

The workflow

name: 🛞 Backstop Reference Test

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  workflow_call:

permissions:
  actions: write
  contents: write
  pull-requests: write

env:
  NODE_VERSION: 20

jobs:
  reference-test:
    name: reference-test
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 1
          ref: ${{ github.event.pull_request.head.sha || github.ref }}

      - name: Setup Node & Cache
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          cache: "npm"
          cache-dependency-path: package-lock.json

      - name: Install
        run: npm ci

      - name: "execute test"
        run: npm run reference-test

The same workflow, on Latchkey

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

name: 🛞 Backstop Reference Test
 
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  workflow_call:
 
permissions:
  actions: write
  contents: write
  pull-requests: write
 
env:
  NODE_VERSION: 20
 
jobs:
  reference-test:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    name: reference-test
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 1
          ref: ${{ github.event.pull_request.head.sha || github.ref }}
 
      - name: Setup Node & Cache
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          cache: "npm"
          cache-dependency-path: package-lock.json
 
      - name: Install
        run: npm ci
 
      - name: "execute test"
        run: npm run reference-test
 
 
 

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.
• Add a job timeout so a hung step cannot burn hours of runner time.

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 1 job per trigger. On Latchkey the same minutes cost up to 58% less than GitHub-hosted, with zero queue time.

Actions used in this workflow