Deploy Documentation workflow (posit-dev/orbital)

The Deploy Documentation workflow from posit-dev/orbital, explained and optimized by Latchkey.

What it does

This is the Deploy Documentation workflow from the posit-dev/orbital 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: Deploy Documentation

on:
  push:
    branches: ["main"]
  workflow_dispatch:

# Sets permissions of the GITHUB_TOKEN to allow deployment to GitHub Pages
permissions:
  contents: read
  pages: write
  id-token: write

# Allow only one concurrent deployment.
concurrency:
  group: "pages"
  cancel-in-progress: false

jobs:
  deploy:
    environment:
      name: github-pages
      url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Set up Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v4
      
      - name: Install uv
        run: |
          pip install uv
      
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: |
          uv sync --dev

      - name: Build Docs
        run: |
          cd docs
          uv run mkdocs build

      - name: Setup Pages
        uses: actions/configure-pages@v5
      
      - name: Upload artifact
        uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
        with:
          path: 'docs/site'
      
      - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
        id: deployment
        uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4

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: Deploy Documentation
 
on:
  push:
    branches: ["main"]
  workflow_dispatch:
 
# Sets permissions of the GITHUB_TOKEN to allow deployment to GitHub Pages
permissions:
  contents: read
  pages: write
  id-token: write
 
# Allow only one concurrent deployment.
concurrency:
  group: "pages"
  cancel-in-progress: false
 
jobs:
  deploy:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    environment:
      name: github-pages
      url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
 
      - name: Set up Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v4
        with:
          cache: 'pip'
      
      - name: Install uv
        run: |
          pip install uv
      
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: |
          uv sync --dev
 
      - name: Build Docs
        run: |
          cd docs
          uv run mkdocs build
 
      - name: Setup Pages
        uses: actions/configure-pages@v5
      
      - name: Upload artifact
        uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
        with:
          path: 'docs/site'
      
      - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
        id: deployment
        uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4
 

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.
• 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