GitHub Events not being triggered for auto-merged Dependabot PRs

Background I have an Azure Static Website that is built from a GitHub hosted repo using the default Action Workflow automation created by Azure when setting up the static site. A really nice feature of this configuration is that when a PR is created in GitHub a test static website environment site is built in Azure to review the changes. When the PR is closed the test environment site is deleted....

March 18, 2024 · 4 min · Richard Fennell

Don't skimp on resources for GHES for demo instances

I wanted to have a look at some GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) upgrade scenarios so decided to create a quick GHES install on my local test Hyper-V instance. Due to me skimping on resources, and making a typo, creating this instance was much harder than it should have been. The first issue was I gave it a tiny data disk, this was down to me making a typo in my GB to Bytes conversion when specifying the size....

June 16, 2022 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

Adding Job Summary support to my GitHub Release Notes Action

A recent addition to GitHub Actions is the ability to create a custom job summary. Using a simple echo command in a script you can write to the job summary steps: - name: Adding markdown run: echo '### Hello world! :rocket:' >> $GITHUB\_STEP\_SUMMARY Now, this got me thinking. I have a well-used custom release notes extension for Azure DevOps. It has a GitHub Action equivalent, but it does not seem to get as much usage....

May 19, 2022 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Fix for cannot 'TypeError: Cannot read property' when Dependabot submits a PR to upgrade a Jest Module

GitHub’s Dependabot is a great tool to help keep your dependencies up to date, and most of the time the PR it generates just merges without a problem. However, sometimes there are issues with other related dependencies. This was the case with a recent PR to update jest-circus to 28.x. The PR failed with the error TypeError: Cannot read property ’enableGlobally’ of undefined at jestAdapter (node_modules/jest-circus/build/legacy-code-todo-rewrite/jestAdapter.js:39:25) at TestScheduler.scheduleTests (node_modules/@jest/core/build/TestScheduler.js:333:13) at runJest (node_modules/@jest/core/build/runJest....

May 19, 2022 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Automating adding issues to Beta GitHub Projects using GitHub Actions

The new GitHub Issues Beta is a big step forward in project management over what was previously possible with the old ‘simple’ form of Issues. The Beta adds many great features such as: Project Boards/Lists Actionable Tasks Custom Fields including Iterations Automation However, one thing that is not available out the box is a means to automatically add newly created issues to a project. Looking at the automations available within a project you might initially think that there is a workflow to do this job, but no....

October 15, 2021 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

But what if I can't use GitHub Codespaces? Welcome to github.dev

Yesterday GitHub released Codespaces as a commercial offering. A new feature I have been using during its beta phase. Codespaces provides a means for developers to easily edit GitHub hosted repos in Visual Studio Code on a high-performance VM. No longer does the new developer on the team have to spend ages getting their local device setup ‘just right’. They can, in a couple of clicks, provision a Codespace that is preconfigured for the exact needs of the project i....

August 12, 2021 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

A first look at the beta of GitHub Issue Forms

Update 10 May 2021 - Remember that GitHub Issue Forms are in early beta, you need to keep an eye on the regular new releases as they come out. For example, my GitHub Forms stopped showing last week. This was due to me using now deprecate lines in the YAML definition files. Once I edited the files to update to support YAML they all leap back into life GitHub Issues are core to tracking work in GitHub....

April 6, 2021 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

Porting my Release Notes Azure DevOps Pipelines Extension to GitHub Actions

One of my most popular Azure DevOps Extensions is my Release Notes Pipeline task. This allows the creation of release notes using information obtained from the Azure DevOps API and formatted using a Handlebars Template. Given the popularity of GitHub Actions, I got to wondering whether porting this extension was viable? Well the release of my new Generate Release Notes with a Handlebars Template action shows that it was. The basic concept of this new action is the same as for the older task, get information on the pipeline/workflow run using the API and then format it using a Handlebars template....

December 31, 2020 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

Experiences setting up Azure Active Directory single sign-on (SSO) integration with GitHub Enterprise

Background GitHub is a great system for individuals and OSS communities for both public and private project. However, corporate customers commonly want more control over their system than the standard GitHub offering. It is for this reason GitHub offers GitHub Enterprise. For most corporates, the essential feature that GitHub Enterprise offers is the use Single Sign On (SSO) i.e. allowing users to login to GitHub using their corporate directory accounts....

March 30, 2020 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

Release of my video on 'Introduction to GitHub Actions'

I recently posted on my initial experiences with GitHub Actions. I had hoped to deliver a session on this subject a DDD 14 in Reading , I even got so far as to propose a session. However, life happened and I found I could not make it to the event. So I decided to do the next best thing and recorded a video of the session. I event went as far as to try to get the ‘DDD event feel’ by recording in front of a ’live audience’ at Black Marble’s offices....

October 10, 2019 · 1 min · Richard Fennell