CITATION.cff Validator workflow (tanghaibao/jcvi)

The CITATION.cff Validator workflow from tanghaibao/jcvi, explained and optimized by Latchkey.

What it does

This is the CITATION.cff Validator workflow from the tanghaibao/jcvi 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

name: CITATION.cff Validator
on:
  push:
    paths:
      - CITATION.cff
  workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
  Validate-CITATION-cff:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: Validate CITATION.cff
    env:
      GITHUB_PAT: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v7
      - name: Validate CITATION.cff
        uses: dieghernan/cff-validator@v5

The same workflow, on Latchkey

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

name: CITATION.cff Validator
on:
  push:
    paths:
      - CITATION.cff
  workflow_dispatch:
concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true
 
jobs:
  Validate-CITATION-cff:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    name: Validate CITATION.cff
    env:
      GITHUB_PAT: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v7
      - name: Validate CITATION.cff
        uses: dieghernan/cff-validator@v5
 

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• Cancel superseded runs when a branch or PR gets a newer push.
• 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.

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