Developing a Modern .NetCore Console Application: (4) Automating Build and Publishing NuGet Packages Using GitHub Actions

Preface

The previous article covered publishing nuget packages to GitHub Packages.

This article takes it a step further by using GitHub Actions to set up a CI/CD pipeline for automatic building and publishing of nuget packages. 😎

GitHub Actions works similarly to the GitLab CI/CD I used before. You can use runners provided by GitHub or configure your own servers as runners.

For details, you can refer to what I wrote previously: Continuous Integration Guide: Configuring and Using GitLab's CI/CD Tools

First, create a token

Address: https://github.com/settings/tokens

This was also covered in the previous article, so I won't go into detail here.

Make sure to save this token properly. Once you navigate away from this page, you won't be able to see it again, as it's only displayed once.

Configuring GitHub Secrets

Sensitive information is not suitable for storing in code. Here, GitHub provides the Secret and variables feature.

Address: https://github.com/Deali-Axy/fluent-dotnet-console/settings/secrets/actions

Add the token we created to the Action's secrets.

I named it TOKEN here.

When using it later in the GitHub Workflow configuration, it will look like this:

${{secrets.TOKEN}}

Writing Workflow Configuration

Create a new .github/workflows directory in the project root

PS: This can be done directly on the GitHub website by clicking "Add File" and typing / in the filename field to automatically recognize it as a directory

Next, start writing the workflow configuration file. It's similar to the previous Gitlab CICD configuration and is also in YAML format.

Here, I'll create a file named publish-nuget.yml

# Publishing a New NuGet Package

name: publish-nuget
run-name: ${{ github.actor }} is publishing a nuget package 🚀

on: [push]

jobs:
  publish-nuget-packages:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: Setup .NET
      uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3
      with:
        dotnet-version: 7.0.x
    - name: Restore dependencies
      run: dotnet restore ./src/Templates/FluentConsole.Templates.csproj
    - name: Build
      run: dotnet build --no-restore -c Release ./src/Templates/FluentConsole.Templates.csproj
    - name: Create the package
      run: dotnet pack -c Release ./src/Templates/FluentConsole.Templates.csproj
    - name: Add nuget source
      run: dotnet nuget add source --username DealiAxy --password ${{ secrets.TOKEN }} --store-password-in-clear-text --name github "https://nuget.pkg.github.com/Deali-Axy/index.json"
    - name: Publish the package to Github Packages
      run: dotnet nuget push ./src/Templates/bin/Release/*.nupkg --api-key ${{ secrets.TOKEN }} --source github --skip-duplicate

Introduction to Some Configurations

In this file, I configured a job named publish-nuget-packages to build NuGet packages and push them to GitHub Packages.

The on at the beginning of the file specifies the trigger conditions for this workflow. It can be configured to run only when the master branch is updated. The configuration is as follows:

on:
  push:
    branches: [ "master" ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ "master" ]

The jobs.<job_id>.runs-on parameter specifies the type of computer to run the job on:

• The target machine can be a GitHub-hosted runner, a larger runner, or a self-hosted runner.

• You can target runners based on the labels assigned to them, their group membership, or a combination of both.

• The runs-on value can be specified in the following forms:

  • A single string
  • A single variable containing a string
  • An array of strings, a variable containing strings, or a combination of both
  • A key: value pair using the group or label keys

• You can specify multiple runners, for example:

  // The job will only run on a self-hosted runner with the labels linux, x64, and gpu
  runs-on: [self-hosted, linux, x64, gpu]
  

  This article simply leverages GitHub-hosted runners, so I won't elaborate on the process of setting up your own runner. For details, please refer to the documentation: https://docs.github.com/zh/actions/using-jobs/choosing-the-runner-for-a-job#choosing-self-hosted-runners

Regarding the Setup .NET step, this parameter uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v3 sets up the runtime environment. Similarly, GitHub also provides other environments like Node.js or Gradle, but they are not within the scope of this discussion.

About GitHub-Hosted Runners

When using GitHub-hosted runners, each job runs in a new instance of the runner image specified by runs-on.

Available GitHub-hosted runner types include:

Lastly, I want to complain about NuGet's push mechanism. I already specified the token in dotnet nuget add source, but I have to specify it again when using push…

Execute Action

Once done, commit the code.

You can view the execution results on the Action page.

Perfect, hands-free! Plus, you can leverage GitHub's runner compute resources for free 😏

Pushing Packages to the Official NuGet Gallery

The first half of this article focuses on pushing NuGet packages to GitHub Packages using GitHub Actions, which requires installing them from a GitHub source.

Next, we'll investigate how to push to the official NuGet Gallery.

Creating an API Key

Address: https://www.nuget.org/account/apikeys

You can choose an expiration period, with a maximum of 365 days. Remember to update the token before it expires, otherwise all pipelines will become invalid.

After creation, click Copy to copy it. This is similar to GitHub, where the token is only displayed once, and it will be gone the next time you access it, so please save it properly.

Adding GitHub Action Secret

The steps are the same as before.

I added one named NUGET_GALLERY_TOKEN.

Modify Workflow

Modify the configuration of the workflow.

Add one more step at the end.

- name: Publish the package to Nuget Gallery
  run: dotnet nuget push ./src/Templates/bin/Release/*.nupkg --api-key ${{ secrets.NUGET_GALLERY_TOKEN }}  --source nuget.org --skip-duplicate

The default source is nuget.org, so specifying it is optional.

Use the following command to list the current source list.

dotnet nuget list source

Done~

References

• https://docs.github.com/zh/actions/quickstart
• https://docs.github.com/zh/actions/automating-builds-and-tests/building-and-testing-net
• https://docs.github.com/zh/packages/managing-github-packages-using-github-actions-workflows/publishing-and-installing-a-package-with-github-actions#upgrading-a-workflow-that-accesses-a-registry-using-a-personal-access-token