inst/workflows/README.md

In zkamvar/sandpaper: Create and Curate Carpentries Lessons

Carpentries Workflows

This directory contains workflows to be used for Lessons using the {sandpaper} lesson infrastructure. Two of these workflows require R (sandpaper-main.yaml and pr-recieve.yaml) and the rest are bots to handle pull request management.

These workflows will likely change as {sandpaper} evolves, so it is important to keep them up-to-date. To do this in your lesson you can do the following in your R console:

# Install/Update sandpaper
options(repos = c(carpentries = "https://carpentries.r-universe.dev/", 
  CRAN = "https://cloud.r-project.org"))
install.packages("sandpaper")

# update the workflows in your lesson
library("sandpaper")
update_github_workflows()

Inside this folder, you will find a file called sandpaper-version.txt, which will contain a version number for sandpaper. This will be used in the future to alert you if a workflow update is needed.

What follows are the descriptions of the workflow files:

Deployment

01 Build and Deploy (sandpaper-main.yaml)

This is the main driver that will only act on the main branch of the repository. This workflow does the following:

1. checks out the lesson
2. provisions the following resources
3. R
4. pandoc
5. lesson infrastructure (stored in a cache)
6. lesson dependencies if needed (stored in a cache)
7. builds the lesson via sandpaper:::ci_deploy()

Caching

This workflow has two caches; one cache is for the lesson infrastructure and the other is for the the lesson dependencies if the lesson contains rendered content. These caches are invalidated by new versions of the infrastructure and the renv.lock file, respectively. If there is a problem with the cache, manual invaliation is necessary. You will need maintain access to the repository and you can either go to the actions tab and click on the caches button to find and invalidate the failing cache or by setting the CACHE_VERSION secret to the current date (which will invalidate all of the caches).

Updates

Setup Information

These workflows run on a schedule and at the maintainer's request. Because they create pull requests that update workflows/require the downstream actions to run, they need a special repository/organization secret token called SANDPAPER_WORKFLOW and it must have the public_repo and workflow scope.

This can be an individual user token, OR it can be a trusted bot account. If you have a repository in one of the official Carpentries accounts, then you do not need to worry about this token being present because the Carpentries Core Team will take care of supplying this token.

If you want to use your personal account: you can go to https://github.com/settings/tokens/new?scopes=public_repo,workflow&description=Sandpaper%20Token to create a token. Once you have created your token, you should copy it to your clipboard and then go to your repository's settings > secrets > actions and create or edit the SANDPAPER_WORKFLOW secret, pasting in the generated token.

If you do not specify your token correctly, the runs will not fail and they will give you instructions to provide the token for your repository.

02 Maintain: Update Workflow Files (update-workflow.yaml)

The {sandpaper} repository was designed to do as much as possible to separate the tools from the content. For local builds, this is absolutely true, but there is a minor issue when it comes to workflow files: they must live inside the repository.

This workflow ensures that the workflow files are up-to-date. The way it work is to download the update-workflows.sh script from GitHub and run it. The script will do the following:

1. check the recorded version of sandpaper against the current version on github
2. update the files if there is a difference in versions

After the files are updated, if there are any changes, they are pushed to a branch called update/workflows and a pull request is created. Maintainers are encouraged to review the changes and accept the pull request if the outputs are okay.

This update is run ~~weekly or~~ on demand.

03 Maintain: Update Package Cache (update-cache.yaml)

For lessons that have generated content, we use {renv} to ensure that the output is stable. This is controlled by a single lockfile which documents the packages needed for the lesson and the version numbers. This workflow is skipped in lessons that do not have generated content.

Because the lessons need to remain current with the package ecosystem, it's a good idea to make sure these packages can be updated periodically. The update cache workflow will do this by checking for updates, applying them in a branch called updates/packages and creating a pull request with only the lockfile changed.

From here, the markdown documents will be rebuilt and you can inspect what has changed based on how the packages have updated.

Pull Request and Review Management

Because our lessons execute code, pull requests are a secruity risk for any lesson and thus have security measures associted with them. Do not merge any pull requests that do not pass checks and do not have bots commented on them.

This series of workflows all go together and are described in the following diagram and the below sections:

Pre Flight Pull Request Validation (pr-preflight.yaml)

This workflow runs every time a pull request is created and its purpose is to validate that the pull request is okay to run. This means the following things:

1. The pull request does not contain modified workflow files
2. If the pull request contains modified workflow files, it does not contain modified content files (such as a situation where @carpentries-bot will make an automated pull request)
3. The pull request does not contain an invalid commit hash (e.g. from a fork that was made before a lesson was transitioned from styles to use the workbench).

Once the checks are finished, a comment is issued to the pull request, which will allow maintainers to determine if it is safe to run the "Receive Pull Request" workflow from new contributors.

Recieve Pull Request (pr-recieve.yaml)

Note of caution: This workflow runs arbitrary code by anyone who creates a pull request. GitHub has safeguarded the token used in this workflow to have no priviledges in the repository, but we have taken precautions to protect against spoofing.

This workflow is triggered with every push to a pull request. If this workflow is already running and a new push is sent to the pull request, the workflow running from the previous push will be cancelled and a new workflow run will be started.

The first step of this workflow is to check if it is valid (e.g. that no workflow files have been modified). If there are workflow files that have been modified, a comment is made that indicates that the workflow is not run. If both a workflow file and lesson content is modified, an error will occurr.

The second step (if valid) is to build the generated content from the pull request. This builds the content and uploads three artifacts:

1. The pull request number (pr)
2. A summary of changes after the rendering process (diff)
3. The rendered files (build)

Because this workflow builds generated content, it follows the same general process as the sandpaper-main workflow with the same caching mechanisms.

The artifacts produced are used by the next workflow.

Comment on Pull Request (pr-comment.yaml)

This workflow is triggered if the pr-recieve.yaml workflow is successful. The steps in this workflow are:

1. Test if the workflow is valid and comment the validity of the workflow to the pull request.
2. If it is valid: create an orphan branch with two commits: the current state of the repository and the proposed changes.
3. If it is valid: update the pull request comment with the summary of changes

Importantly: if the pull request is invalid, the branch is not created so any malicious code is not published.

From here, the maintainer can request changes from the author and eventually either merge or reject the PR. When this happens, if the PR was valid, the preview branch needs to be deleted.

Send Close PR Signal (pr-close-signal.yaml)

Triggered any time a pull request is closed. This emits an artifact that is the pull request number for the next action

Remove Pull Request Branch (pr-post-remove-branch.yaml)

Tiggered by pr-close-signal.yaml. This removes the temporary branch associated with the pull request (if it was created).

zkamvar/sandpaper documentation built on April 21, 2024, 1:17 a.m.