Using jobs in a workflow

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 and billing" 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 "Workflow Jobs."

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, 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 applies to all jobs in the dependency chain from the point of failure onwards.

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:

1. job1
2. job2
3. 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 "Expressions."