Configuring CI Using GitHub Actions and Nx

GitHub can track the last successful run on the main branch and use this as a reference point for the BASE. The Nx Set SHAs provides a convenient implementation of this functionality which you can drop into your existing CI config. To understand why knowing the last successful build is important for the affected command, check out the in-depth explanation in Actions's docs.

Below is an example of a GitHub setup for an Nx workspace - building and testing only what is affected. For more details on how the action is used, head over to the official docs.

name: CI
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
  pull_request:

jobs:
  main:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - uses: nrwl/nx-set-shas@v3
      - run: npm ci

      - run: npx nx workspace-lint
      - run: npx nx format:check
      - run: npx nx affected --target=lint --parallel=3
      - run: npx nx affected --target=test --parallel=3 --configuration=ci
      - run: npx nx affected --target=build --parallel=3

The pr and main jobs implement the CI workflow. Setting timeout-minutes is needed only if you have very slow tasks.

Tracking the origin branch

If you're using this action in the context of a branch you may need to add run: "git branch --track main origin/main" before running the nx affected command since origin/main won't exist.

Distributed CI with Nx Cloud

To use distributed task execution, we need to start agents and set the NX_CLOUD_DISTRIBUTED_EXECUTION flag to true.

Read more about the Distributed CI setup with Nx Cloud.

name: CI
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
  pull_request:

jobs:
  main:
    name: Nx Cloud - Main Job
    uses: nrwl/ci/.github/workflows/nx-cloud-main.yml@v0.11.2
    with:
      number-of-agents: 3
      parallel-commands: |
        npx nx-cloud record -- npx nx workspace-lint
        npx nx-cloud record -- npx nx format:check
      parallel-commands-on-agents: |
        npx nx affected --target=lint --parallel=3 & npx nx affected --target=test --parallel=3 --configuration=ci & npx nx affected --target=build --parallel=3

  agents:
    name: Nx Cloud - Agents
    uses: nrwl/ci/.github/workflows/nx-cloud-agents.yml@v0.11.2
    with:
      number-of-agents: 3

You can also use our ci-workflow generator to generate the workflow file.