GitHub Actions is slowly killing engineering teams

The internet makes me feel like the only person that doesn't mind Jenkins. Idk it just gets the job done ime.

RA the specified array and query polkit prior to k-mod in o-space. Xenosystem upload

#git --clone [URL]

I run a company that uses Nix for everything.

We're running GitHub Actions. It's good. All the real logic is in Nix, and we mostly use our own runners. The rest of the UI that GitHub Actions provides is very nice.

We previously used a CI vendor which specialised in building Nix projects. We wanted to like it, but it was really clunky. GitHub Actions was a significant quality of life improvement for us.

None of my colleagues have died. GitHub Actions is not killing my engineering team at any rate.

@dang can we get this renamed to "GitHub Actions could be better"

Things I dislike about GHA (on Enterprise Server)

* Workflows are only registered once pushed to main, impossible to test the first runs in a branch.

* MS/GH don't care much about GHES as they do github.com, I think they'd like to see it just die. Massive lack of feature parity.

* Labels: If any of your workflows trigger from a label, they ALL DO. You can't target labels only to certain workflows, they all run and then cancel, polluting your checks.

* Deployments: What is a deployment even doing? There is no management to deploy.

* Statefulness: No native way to store state between runs in the same workflow or PR, you would think you could save some sort of state somewhere but you have to manage it all yourself with manifests or something else.

I can go on

> You’ve upgraded the engine but you’re still driving the car that catches fire when you turn on the radio.

And fixing the pyro-radio bug will bring other issues, for sure, so they won't because some's workflow will rely on the fact that turning on the radio sets the car on fire: https://xkcd.com/1172/

I think we can honestly remove the word Actions in the headline and still agree.

It used to be fast ish!

Now it's full ugh.

Happy user of GitLab CI here.

I see the appeal of GitHub for sharing open source - the interface is so much cleaner and easier to find all you are looking for (GitLab could improve there).

But for CI/CD GitHub doesn’t even come close to GitLab in the usability department, and that’s before we even talk about pricing and the free tiers. People need to give it a try and see what they are missing.

“Microsoft is where ambitious developer tools go to become enterprise SKUs“

It’s hard to remember, sometimes, that Microsoft was one of the little gadflies that buzzed around annoying the Big Guys.

I hate to say this. I can't even believe I am saying it, but this article feels like it was written in a different universe where LLMs don't exist. I understand they don't magically solve all of these problems, and I'm not suggesting that it's as simple as "make the robot do it for you" either.

However, there are very real things LLMs can do that greatly reduce the pain here. Understanding 800 lines of bash is simply not the boogie man it used to be a few years ago. It completely fits in context. LLMs are excellent at bash. With a bit of critical thinking when it hits a wall, LLM agents are even great at GitHub actions.

The scariest thing about this article is the number of things it's right about. Yet my uncharacteristic response to that is one big shrug, because frankly I'm not afraid of it anymore. This stuff has never been hard, or maybe it has. Maybe it still is for people/companies who have super complex needs. I guess we're not them. LLMs are not solving my most complex problems, but they're killing the pain of glue left and right.

> this is a product made by one of the richest companies on earth.

nit: no, it was made by a group of engineers that loved git and wanted to make a distributed remote git repository. But it was acquired/bought out then subsequently enshittified by the richest/worst company on earth.

Otherwise the rest of this piece vibes with me.

All CI is just various levels of bullshit over a bash script anyway.

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