Build Gem Artifact workflow (jekyll/jekyll-admin)

The Build Gem Artifact workflow from jekyll/jekyll-admin, explained and optimized by Latchkey.

What it does

This is the Build Gem Artifact workflow from the jekyll/jekyll-admin 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: Build Gem Artifact

on:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  build_gem:
    name: Build Gem Artifact
    runs-on: "ubuntu-latest"
    strategy:
      fail-fast: true
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: "Set up Ruby 2.7"
        uses: ruby/setup-ruby@v1
        with:
          ruby-version: "2.7"
          bundler-cache: true
      - name: "Set up Node 12"
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: "12"
          cache: yarn
      - name: Install Frontend Dependencies
        run: yarn install
      - name: Test Backend
        run: bundle exec rspec
      - name: Test and Build Frontend
        run: bash script/build
      - name: Build Gem
        run: gem build jekyll-admin.gemspec
      - name: Stash Gem as Temporary Artifact
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: "jekyll-admin.gem"
          path: "${{ github.workspace }}/*.gem"
          retention-days: 15

The same workflow, on Latchkey

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

name: Build Gem Artifact
 
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
 
jobs:
  build_gem:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    name: Build Gem Artifact
    runs-on: "ubuntu-latest"
    strategy:
      fail-fast: true
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: "Set up Ruby 2.7"
        uses: ruby/setup-ruby@v1
        with:
          ruby-version: "2.7"
          bundler-cache: true
      - name: "Set up Node 12"
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: "12"
          cache: yarn
      - name: Install Frontend Dependencies
        run: yarn install
      - name: Test Backend
        run: bundle exec rspec
      - name: Test and Build Frontend
        run: bash script/build
      - name: Build Gem
        run: gem build jekyll-admin.gemspec
      - name: Stash Gem as Temporary Artifact
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: "jekyll-admin.gem"
          path: "${{ github.workspace }}/*.gem"
          retention-days: 15
 

What changed

• 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 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