Note: GitHub-hosted runners are not currently supported on GitHub Enterprise Server. You can see more information about planned future support on the GitHub public roadmap.
Overview
A workflow run is made up of one or more jobs
, which run in parallel by default. To run jobs sequentially, you can define dependencies on other jobs using the jobs.<job_id>.needs
keyword.
Each job runs in a runner environment specified by runs-on
.
You can run an unlimited number of jobs as long as you are within the workflow usage limits. For more information, see "Usage limits, billing, and administration" for GitHub-hosted runners and "About self-hosted runners" for self-hosted runner usage limits.
If you need to find the unique identifier of a job running in a workflow run, you can use the GitHub Enterprise Server API. For more information, see "REST API endpoints for GitHub Actions."
Setting an ID for a job
Use jobs.<job_id>
to give your job a unique identifier. The key job_id
is a string and its value is a map of the job's configuration data. You must replace <job_id>
with a string that is unique to the jobs
object. The <job_id>
must start with a letter or _
and contain only alphanumeric characters, -
, or _
.
Example: Creating jobs
In this example, two jobs have been created, and their job_id
values are my_first_job
and my_second_job
.
jobs:
my_first_job:
name: My first job
my_second_job:
name: My second job
Setting a name for a job
Use jobs.<job_id>.name
to set a name for the job, which is displayed in the GitHub UI.
Defining prerequisite jobs
Use jobs.<job_id>.needs
to identify any jobs that must complete successfully before this job will run. It can be a string or array of strings. If a job fails or is skipped, all jobs that need it are skipped unless the jobs use a conditional expression that causes the job to continue. If a run contains a series of jobs that need each other, a failure or skip applies to all jobs in the dependency chain from the point of failure or skip onwards. If you would like a job to run even if a job it is dependent on did not succeed, use the always()
conditional expression in jobs.<job_id>.if
.
Example: Requiring successful dependent jobs
jobs:
job1:
job2:
needs: job1
job3:
needs: [job1, job2]
In this example, job1
must complete successfully before job2
begins, and job3
waits for both job1
and job2
to complete.
The jobs in this example run sequentially:
job1
job2
job3
Example: Not requiring successful dependent jobs
jobs:
job1:
job2:
needs: job1
job3:
if: ${{ always() }}
needs: [job1, job2]
In this example, job3
uses the always()
conditional expression so that it always runs after job1
and job2
have completed, regardless of whether they were successful. For more information, see "Evaluate expressions in workflows and actions."