Nightly Wagtail test workflow (torchbox/wagtailmedia)

The Nightly Wagtail test workflow from torchbox/wagtailmedia, explained and optimized by Latchkey.

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Source: torchbox/wagtailmedia.github/workflows/nightly-tests.ymlLicense BSD-3-ClauseView source

What it does

This is the Nightly Wagtail test workflow from the torchbox/wagtailmedia repository, a real project running GitHub Actions. It is shown here with attribution under its BSD-3-Clause license.

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

The workflow

workflow (.yml)

name: Nightly Wagtail test

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 0 * * 1"

  workflow_dispatch:

concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true

permissions:  {}

jobs:
  nightly-test:
    name: Nightly tests against Wagtail main
    # Cannot check the existence of secrets, so limiting to repository name to prevent all forks to run nightly.
    # See: https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/520
    if: ${{ github.repository == 'torchbox/wagtailmedia' }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: read

    services:
      postgres:
        image: postgres@sha256:5fbbf7b4bd0c7f7faedb9814ec02cb8b639f44ccd5e81e5332e55e7b6b0f32b4  # v15.18
        env:
          POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres
        ports:
          - 5432:5432
        options: --health-cmd pg_isready --health-interval 10s --health-timeout 5s --health-retries 5

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@de0fac2e4500dabe0009e67214ff5f5447ce83dd  # v6.0.2
        with:
          persist-credentials: false
      - name: Set up Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@a309ff8b426b58ec0e2a45f0f869d46889d02405  # v6.2.0
        with:
          python-version: "3.14"
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: |
          python -m pip install --upgrade pip
          pip install "git+https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail.git@main#egg=wagtail"
          pip install -e .[testing]
      - name: Test
        id: test
        continue-on-error: true
        run: |
          cd tests
          python manage.py test
        env:
          DATABASE_ENGINE: django.db.backends.postgresql
          DATABASE_HOST: localhost
          DATABASE_USER: postgres
          DATABASE_PASS: postgres

      - name: Send Slack notification on failure
        if: steps.test.outcome == 'failure'
        run: |
          python .github/report_nightly_build_failure.py
        env:
          SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL: ${{ secrets.SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL }}

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: Nightly Wagtail test
 
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 0 * * 1"
 
  workflow_dispatch:
 
concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true
 
permissions:  {}
 
jobs:
  nightly-test:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    name: Nightly tests against Wagtail main
    # Cannot check the existence of secrets, so limiting to repository name to prevent all forks to run nightly.
    # See: https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/520
    if: ${{ github.repository == 'torchbox/wagtailmedia' }}
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    permissions:
      contents: read
 
    services:
      postgres:
        image: postgres@sha256:5fbbf7b4bd0c7f7faedb9814ec02cb8b639f44ccd5e81e5332e55e7b6b0f32b4  # v15.18
        env:
          POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres
        ports:
          - 5432:5432
        options: --health-cmd pg_isready --health-interval 10s --health-timeout 5s --health-retries 5
 
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@de0fac2e4500dabe0009e67214ff5f5447ce83dd  # v6.0.2
        with:
          persist-credentials: false
      - name: Set up Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@a309ff8b426b58ec0e2a45f0f869d46889d02405  # v6.2.0
        with:
          cache: 'pip'
          python-version: "3.14"
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: |
          python -m pip install --upgrade pip
          pip install "git+https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail.git@main#egg=wagtail"
          pip install -e .[testing]
      - name: Test
        id: test
        continue-on-error: true
        run: |
          cd tests
          python manage.py test
        env:
          DATABASE_ENGINE: django.db.backends.postgresql
          DATABASE_HOST: localhost
          DATABASE_USER: postgres
          DATABASE_PASS: postgres
 
      - name: Send Slack notification on failure
        if: steps.test.outcome == 'failure'
        run: |
          python .github/report_nightly_build_failure.py
        env:
          SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL: ${{ secrets.SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL }}

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

actions/checkout actions/setup-python