Setup CI testing of Website Build

[lwasser]

Our website build should be tested each time there is a new PR. This can be done with GitHub Actions

Here is an example of how testing happens on another site that i setup

It will be easy to setup the same thing here. this is in reference to 2 recent PR's (THANK YOU AGAIN FOR THESE) from folks catching broken links @xuanxu @NickleDave

Tasks:

• Setup a github action to build the site and catch errors
• make sure linkchecker runs to find broken links

The build should run on all branches and PR's so that we don't merge pr's that break the site.

[Athene-ai]

I am interested

[lwasser]

that would be awesome @Athene-ai you are welcome to work on this and submit a PR to this repo if this is something that you'd like to work on. And if you need more information please say the word!

[Athene-ai]

@lwasser thanks and for sure I will take a look at this repo ;-)

[NickleDave]

Thank you @Athene-ai!

In case it helps, this is what usrse.github.io uses to build:
https://github.com/USRSE/usrse.github.io/blob/main/.circleci/config.yml
I'm not quite sure why they build on circle.ci instead of with Actions, I wonder if it's easier to get artifacts that way?
Maybe @vsoch would know and be kind enough to give us a clue.

I also saw that jekyll provides actions:
https://jekyllrb.com/docs/continuous-integration/github-actions/
but I didn't get as far as figuring out if there's an easy way to get each push to build somewhere we can view it without the whole thing going live

[NickleDave]

And this is what the US-RSE site uses for link checking in actions 👇
It can be a little flaky, not sure if you know a better option. Just trying to point to existing actions to make this easier.

https://github.com/USRSE/usrse.github.io/blob/24dd043ab0453896ca49c655461776ee788b00d4/.github/workflows/linting.yaml#L17

    - name: URLs-checker
    
      # Will be updated to 0.0.26
      uses: urlstechie/[email protected]
      with:
        # A comma-separated list of file types to cover in the URL checks
        file_types: .md,.py,.yml

        # Choose whether to include file with no URLs in the prints.
        print_all: false

        # More verbose summary at the end of a run
        verbose: true

        # How many times to retry a failed request (defaults to 1)
        retry_count: 3

        # Google Forms is having enormous timeouts
        timeout: 10

        # Exclude these patterns from the checker
        exclude_patterns: supercomputing.org,https://pace.gatech.edu,https://www.linkedin.com,jobs.colorado.edu,zoom.us,danielskatz.org,usrse.github.io.wiki.git,ornl.gov,jobs.bnl.gov,https://www.rd-alliance.org/,https://uwhires.admin.washington.edu/

        # Exclude these files from the checker
        exclude_files: README.md,SocialNetworks.yml,map.yml,_config.yml,tests/test_,.github/workflows,_posts/newsletters/

[lwasser]

heya @NickleDave i actually setup an action like this for earthdatascience.org - please check out the original issue for an example.

UPDATE SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT with THAT LINK>.. let me find it.

[vsoch]

Circle CI is for previews. If you don’t plan on having many builds, Netlify (free tier) is amazing, but the free tier is too small for a very busy site.

[lwasser]

ok i fixed the link. that is really odd!!

[lwasser]

👋 @vsoch !!! we are definitely interested in netlify - also to get out of the annoying safe mode limitations here

[vsoch]

That version of urlchecker is very old. https://github.com/urlstechie/urlchecker-action/releases/tag/0.0.33

For transparency, I maintain this library.

[NickleDave]

UPDATE SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT with THAT LINK>.. let me find it.

Ah whoops I should have asked for clarification about why the link was not actions before dumping in a bunch of other stuff.
Sorry for any confusion.

@Athene-ai feel free to ignore me and work from the Actions that @lwasser linked to now that it's fixed:
https://github.com/earthlab/earthlab.github.io/blob/main/.github/workflows/build-site.yml

sorry 😁 😬

[Athene-ai]

@NickleDave absolutely do not worry about 😉

[lwasser]

i second @Athene-ai ... maybe they have a better idea as to how to build our workflow :) thank you @NickleDave for the input!! and thank y'all for the suggestions and guidance and for being here! y'all rock!

[lwasser]

Ok this has been setup already so closing !!