Build Preview workflow (openlayers/openlayers)

The Build Preview workflow from openlayers/openlayers, 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: openlayers/openlayers.github/workflows/build-preview.ymlLicense BSD-2-ClauseView source

What it does

This is the Build Preview workflow from the openlayers/openlayers repository, a real project running GitHub Actions. It is shown here with attribution under its BSD-2-Clause license.

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

The workflow

workflow (.yml)

name: Build Preview

on:
  pull_request:
    branches:
      - main

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  build-preview:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v7.0.0
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v6
        with:
          node-version: '24'
      - run: npm ci
      - run: ./tasks/build-website.sh -v dev -l dev
      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v7
        with:
          name: site
          path: build/site
      - name: Store pull request number for later use
        run: |
          mkdir -p build/pr
          echo ${{github.event.number}} > build/pr/number
      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v7
        with:
          name: pr
          path: build/pr

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.

name: Build Preview
 
on:
  pull_request:
    branches:
      - main
 
permissions:
  contents: read
 
concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true
 
jobs:
  build-preview:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v7.0.0
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v6
        with:
          cache: 'npm'
          node-version: '24'
      - run: npm ci
      - run: ./tasks/build-website.sh -v dev -l dev
      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v7
        with:
          name: site
          path: build/site
      - name: Store pull request number for later use
        run: |
          mkdir -p build/pr
          echo ${{github.event.number}} > build/pr/number
      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v7
        with:
          name: pr
          path: build/pr

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 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

actions/checkout actions/setup-node actions/upload-artifact