📡 PDS Engineering Actions: Git Ping

This is an action for GitHub that "pings" a repository branch by creating an empty commit and pushing to a specified branch. This is typically used to just trigger a GitHub action from another action's workflow.

ℹ️ Using this Action

To use this action in your own workflow, just provide it with the following parameters:

• repository: The target repository name, with owner name separated by a slash, such as nasa-pds/pdsen-corral.
• token: A GitHub personal access token
• branch: The name of the branch to which to send the empty commit.
• message: The log message to use with the commit.

👮‍♂️ Personal Access Token

Note that in order to make the "ping" or "empty commit" to a repository, this action must havea access to repositories. This is afforded by the token. To set up such a token:

1. Vist your GitHub account's Settings.
2. Go to "Developer Settings".
3. Go to "Personal access tokens".
4. Press "Generate new token"; authenticate if needed.
5. Add a note for the token, such as "PDS Ping Repo Access"
6. Check the following scopes:
   • repo:status
   • repo_deployment
   • public_repo
7. Press "Generate new token"

Save the token (a hex string) and install it in your source, not target, repository:

1. Visit the source repository's web page on GitHub.
2. Go to "Settings".
3. Go to "Secrets".
4. Press "New secret".
5. Name the secret, such as ADMIN_GITHUB_TOKEN, and insert the token's saved hex string as the value.
6. Press "Add secret".

Use this name in the source's workflow, such as ${{secrets.ADMIN_GITHUB_TOKEN}}. You should now destroy any saved copies of the token's hex string.

💁‍♀️ Demonstration

The following is a brief example how a workflow that shows how this action can be used:

name: 👩‍🏫 Stable Genius Release
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master
jobs:
  build:
    name: 👷‍♀️ Build Job
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: 💳 Check out the code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: 🔧 Do something with it
        uses: …
      - name: 📡 Ping the PDS Engineering Corral
        uses: NASA-PDS/git-ping@master
        with:
          repository: nasa-pds/pdsen-corral
          token: ${{secrets.ADMIN_GITHUB_TOKEN}}
          branch: master
          message: Stable Genius service upgraded to ${{github.ref}}