Publish to NPM workflow (glidejs/glide)

The Publish to NPM workflow from glidejs/glide, explained and optimized by Latchkey.

CI health: D - needs work

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

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Source: glidejs/glide.github/workflows/npm-publish.ymlLicense MITView source

What it does

This is the Publish to NPM workflow from the glidejs/glide 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

workflow (.yml)

# This workflow will run tests using node and then publish a package to NPM when a release is created

name: Publish to NPM

on:
  push:
    tags: [ 'v*.*.*' ]
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: 14
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm test
      - run: npm run build

  publish-npm:
    needs: build
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: 14
          registry-url: https://registry.npmjs.org/
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm run build
      - run: npm publish
        env:
          NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{secrets.npm_token}}

The same workflow, on Latchkey

Estimated ~20% faster on cache hits, plus fewer wasted runs and a safer supply chain. Added and changed lines are highlighted.

# This workflow will run tests using node and then publish a package to NPM when a release is created
 
name: Publish to NPM
 
on:
  push:
    tags: [ 'v*.*.*' ]
  workflow_dispatch:
 
concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true
 
jobs:
  build:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          cache: 'npm'
          node-version: 14
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm test
      - run: npm run build
 
  publish-npm:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    needs: build
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          cache: 'npm'
          node-version: 14
          registry-url: https://registry.npmjs.org/
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm run build
      - run: npm publish
        env:
          NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{secrets.npm_token}}

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.
Cache dependency installs on the setup step so they are served from cache.
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 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/setup-node