Github Actions

GitHub Actions is a powerful tool that allows developers to automate their software development workflow. One of the many things you can do with GitHub Actions is to build and test Swift applications. In this post, we will explore how to set up GitHub Actions for building and testing Swift applications.

First, you need to create a new GitHub repository for your Swift application. Once the repository is created, you can access the Actions tab to set up your workflow. In the Actions tab, you will see a variety of pre-built workflows that you can use as a starting point. For building and testing Swift applications, you can use the "Swift" workflow.

The "Swift" workflow is a pre-built workflow that uses the swift command to build and test your application. The workflow has two steps, one for building and one for testing. In the build step, the workflow runs the swift build command to build your application. In the test step, the workflow runs the swift test command to run your tests.

You can customize the workflow to suit your needs. For example, if you want to run specific tests or build with specific configurations, you can change the commands in the actions file.

Once you have set up the workflow, you can start using GitHub Actions to build and test your Swift application. Every time you push a change to your repository, GitHub Actions will automatically run the workflow and build and test your application. You can also trigger the workflow manually by clicking the "Run workflow" button in the Actions tab.

In conclusion, GitHub Actions is a great tool for automating your software development workflow, and it can be used to easily build and test Swift applications. With the help of pre-built workflows and the ability to customize them, you can easily set up and maintain a reliable build and testing process for your Swift projects.

Here is an example of a simple GitHub Actions workflow for building and testing a Swift application:

name: Swift

on: [push]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: macOS-latest

    steps:
    - name: Checkout code
      uses: actions/checkout@v2

    - name: Build
      run: swift build

    - name: Test
      run: swift test

This workflow is triggered every time a change is pushed to the repository. The workflow has one job called "build" which runs on the latest version of macOS. The job has three steps:

Checkout code: This step uses the actions/checkout action to check out the code from the repository. Build: This step runs the swift build command to build the application. Test: This step runs the swift test command to run the tests for the application. You can also add additional steps to the workflow, such as generating code coverage reports or deploying the application to a server. Here is an example of how you can add a step to generate code coverage reports using the slather tool:

     - name: Generate code coverage report
      run: slather coverage --scheme MyApp --workspace MyApp.xcworkspace --output-directory coverage

This step runs the slather coverage command to generate code coverage reports for the MyApp scheme in the MyApp.xcworkspace workspace and output the results to the coverage directory.

You can also add steps to deploy the application to a server such as Heroku. Here is an example of how you can add a step to deploy the application to Heroku using the heroku/deploy action:

     - name: Deploy to Heroku
      uses: heroku/deploy-action@v2
      with:
        app-name: my-app-name

This step uses the heroku/deploy-action to deploy the application to the Heroku app named my-app-name.

By using GitHub Actions, you can easily set up a workflow that builds and tests your Swift application, and can also include additional steps such as code coverage reports and deployment to a server.