Overview 
"Think globally, act locally"
Currently this library only supports the HCL syntax, not the YAML syntax
Run your GitHub Actions locally! Why would you want to do this? Two reasons:
- Fast Feedback - Rather than having to commit/push every time you want test out the changes you are making to your
main.workflowfile (or for any changes to embedded GitHub actions), you can useactto run the actions locally. The environment variables and filesystem are all configured to match what GitHub provides. - Local Task Runner - I love make. However, I also hate repeating myself. With
act, you can use the GitHub Actions defined in yourmain.workflowfile to replace yourMakefile!
How Does It Work?
When you run act it reads in your GitHub Actions from .github/main.workflow and determines the set of actions that need to be run. It uses the Docker API to either pull or build the necessary images, as defined in your main.workflow file and finally determines the execution path based on the dependencies that were defined. Once it has the execution path, it then uses the Docker API to run containers for each action based on the images prepared earlier. The environment variables and filesystem are all configured to match what GitHub provides.
Let's see it in action with a sample repo!
Installation
To install with Homebrew, run:
brew install nektos/tap/act
Alternatively, you can use the following: