Automate checkout, deploy, and --site + --base config

[natemoo-re]

After looking at how we recommend this action is used, it turns out we can do a bit more to make it simple for people to use. This would be a great v2 for this action.

Based on https://github.com/actions/configure-pages, we can automatically infer the correct --site and --base flags for Astro to use when building. This eliminates the main gotcha with our current setup (that you almost certainly need to update your config with these values).

This also automatically uses actions/checkout@v4 to pull your repo and actions/deploy-pages@v2 to deploy your site to GitHub Pages. These changes mean that our recommended setup is greatly simplified.

name: Deploy to GitHub Pages

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  workflow_dispatch:

permissions:
  contents: read
  pages: write
  id-token: write

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment:
      name: github-pages
      url: ${{ steps.deploy.outputs.url }}
    steps:
      - name: Build and Deploy
        id: deploy
        uses: withastro/action@configure-site
        # when this is released, it will be withastro/action@v2

Instead of running npm run build, we now run the astro CLI directly. Honestly this is the change I'm most hesitant about, because some folks might want CI to fail if astro-check fails or use pre/post-build scripts. This change would skip those and just do astro build. Open to feedback!

[KorigamiK]

lgtm!

[KorigamiK]

If this is working maybe you look into merging?

[natemoo-re]

@KorigamiK If you want to try this PR while we're working on it, you're welcome to point your repository to it! Using withastro/action@configure-site should do the trick.

[delucis]

I think this is great!

One thing I’ll say regarding automatic base is that users probably still want to set base in their config in most cases. Otherwise while developing locally you have a base of / and links using /github-base/ will 404. Saw this confusion in withastro/starlight#804 for example where a user deploying to GH Pages had manually set:

base: process.env.CI ? '/github-base/' : undefined,

making it impossible to get links working in both places.

I don’t know if that makes setting base automatically less attractive or not. Would still work well for people who mostly don’t work locally.

[delucis]

I can understand the hesitation here is it makes customisation of the build step impossible (no way to run pre/post scripts as well for example).

I guess adding an input that tells us the build command risks not working with automatic --site and --base flags if someone’s package script is not the right form? (e.g. something like "build": "astro build && node ./post-build")

Some options off the top of my head:

• Add prebuild/postbuild inputs for scripts to run either side of the build
• Add default steps that do this “automatically” (npm run prebuild --if-present — maybe no Yarn support?)
• Just add a single build command input that overrides our clever automatic one — up to a user to configure site/base correctly if they decide to override for some reason.

[natemoo-re]

Yeah I was checking how Vercel does this, and they phrase it as "overrides," which makes sense. actions/configure-pages also has an interesting approach where they override the values in the config file after cloning. So that's maybe a more fool-proof method.

Of course, if Astro accepted ASTRO_SITE and ASTRO_BASE env variables, that could work too. Or we could just publish a GitHub Pages integration that automatically wires those two values for you?

Many ways to tackle the problem!

[ollecoffee]

Looking forward to test this @natemoo-re 💯 what did I miss here? https://github.com/ollegkz/olle.coffee/actions/runs/7401803673/job/20138353320

[natemoo-re]

Looking forward to test this @natemoo-re 💯 what did I miss here? https://github.com/ollegkz/olle.coffee/actions/runs/7401803673/job/20138353320

That is probably on my end! I'm guessing the command is not correct so Bun is printing its help message instead

[ollecoffee]

Seems to work as of 6e05a33 as you can see https://github.com/ollegkz/olle.coffee/actions/runs/7423744689/job/20201840905 but the url is no longer printed out in the deploy complete step 😮

Compare https://github.com/ollegkz/olle.coffee/actions/runs/7423744689/job/20201840905 complete job with https://github.com/ollegkz/olle.coffee/actions/runs/7400679346/job/20134828466 :suprised_pikachu:

[natemoo-re]

Thanks @ollegkz! I forked your repo so I can test changes directly against it. I think it's bun-specific.

[ollecoffee]

Any luck on merging this @natemoo-re? 🥇

[swift502]

Works for root deployment.
And base works too. 🙏

To summarize then, the "site" param in astro.config.js is no longer mandatory for deployment?
But base still has a few gotchas, if deploying with a base:

• Internal links still have to be updated to the new base before deployment
• If you want to astro dev sites with internal links, you still have to define a base in your config

But I hope we can simplify the docs a bit once this is merged.

[ollecoffee]

Hmm, I just noticed that actions/configure-pages@v3 uses node16 and actions/configure-pages@v4 uses node20 :)

[natemoo-re]

I'm converting this to a draft since I haven't had time to finish this up! I still think this is a better solution that what we have currently, but I'm hesitant about spawning the astro CLI directly.

If anyone else wants to pick this up, please do. Otherwise I will try to circle back to this in the future.