It's been said that automating oneself out of a job is one of the best qualities of a software engineer. When it comes to building and releasing software that statement becomes more relevant than ever. GitHub is a popular choice for hosting code and since a few years ago offers a native CI/CD solution: GitHub Actions. They are a powerful tool that's worth adding to your development toolbox but getting started might be a bit daunting. In this session we'll cover the basics of working with GitHub Actions workflows and their structure, moving into more advanced topics such as inputs/outputs, job dependencies, job matrices, reusable workflows, composite actions, and secrets.

This session is example driven thus plenty of snippets will be shown and explained.
- a basic GH worflow (build a Maven project)
- show steps inputs/outputs
- show dependencies between jobs
- configure a job matrix for Linux, windows, Osx
- demonstrate secrets and variables
- demonstrate reusable workflows
- build a custom GH Action with composite (Java based)