Easy migration from Travis to GitHub Actions

Introduction

As of 2021, Travis has stopped giving access to its CI resources to open source projects for free.

GitHub Actions is a free alternative for open source projects that offers great performance and flexibility.

Migrating the CI pipeline from Travis to GitHub actions

Here is a basic .travis.yml file:

language: python
python:
  - "3.7"
  - "3.8"
before_install:
  - sudo apt-get update
  - sudo apt-get install --yes gcc python3-dev libsqlcipher-dev
  - pip install pycodestyle codecov
  - python3 setup.py install
script:
  - pycodestyle
  - pytest
  - coverage report -m
after_success:
  - codecov

To reproduce that file with GitHub actions, you need to create a file .github/workflows/ci.yml in your repository:

mkdir -p .github/workflows
touch .github/workflows/ci.yml

To test against a single version of a programming language (for example Python 3.9 as seen below), your ci.yml file should follow this syntax:

name: CI

on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Set up Python 3.9
        uses: actions/setup-python@v1
        with:
          python-version: 3.9
      - name: Display Python version
        run: python -c "import sys; print(sys.version)"
      - name: Before tests (same as "before_install")
        run: |
          sudo apt-get update
          sudo apt-get install --yes gcc python3-dev libsqlcipher-dev
          pip install pycodestyle codecov pytest
          python3 setup.py install
      - name: Run test suite (same as "script")
        run: |
          pycodestyle
          pytest
          coverage report -m
      - name: Finalization (same as "after_success")
        run: |
          codecov

If you would like to test against multiple versions of a programming language, you would replace:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Set up Python 3.9
        uses: actions/setup-python@v1
        with:
          python-version: 3.9

with:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        python-version: ['3.7', '3.8', '3.9']

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Set up Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v2
        with:
          python-version: ${{ matrix.python-version }}
          architecture: x64

Common dependencies

Use MySQL in GitHub actions:

Add the following step to your ci.yml file:

      - name: Set up MySQL
        run: |
          sudo systemctl start mysql.service
          mysql -e 'CREATE DATABASE my_db;' -uroot -proot

The credentials will be:

• Host: localhost
• Username: root
• Password: root
• Database: my_db (can be configured in ci.yml)

Use PostgreSQL in GitHub actions:

Add the following step to your ci.yml file:

      - name: Start PostgreSQL
        run: |
          sudo systemctl start postgresql.service
          pg_isready
      - name: Create PostgreSQL user
        run: |
          sudo -u postgres psql --command="CREATE USER db_user PASSWORD 'db_password'" --command="\du"
      - name: Create PostgreSQL database
        run: |
          sudo -u postgres createdb --owner=db_user my_db

The credentials will be:

• Host: localhost
• Username: db_user (can be configured in ci.yml)
• Password: db_password (can be configured in ci.yml)
• Database: my_db (can be configured in ci.yml)

Use Redis in GitHub actions:

Add the following step to your ci.yml file:

      - uses: shogo82148/actions-setup-redis@v1
        with:
          redis-version: '6.x'

The credentials will be:

• Host: localhost
• Password: no password