Creating a new Action to install (setup) nushell

Since I recently fell in love with nushell it makes sense to have this available on my workflows.

Composite Workflows

This kinde of action will perform action using the base image you have set in your workflow.

Example of a simple Workflow using the latest ubuntu image as the base environment to execute a nushell script that handles the test execution routines.

# .github/workflows/running_ci_routines.yml @ https://github.com/JaneDoe82/my-new-app
name: running ci routines
on: [push]
jobs:
  running_tests:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5

      - name: Running Test Routines
        run: nu testing.nu

On the current set of steps the last one (Running Test Routines) will fail since nushell does not come installed by default.

If you try to install it by sudo apt install -y nushell it won't work since nushell is not a core package as well.

For that to work we need to setup the apt repositories:

wget -qO- https://apt.fury.io/nushell/gpg.key | \
  sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/fury-nushell.gpg

echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/fury-nushell.gpg] https://apt.fury.io/nushell/ /" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/fury.list

and then

sudo apt update &&  apt install nushell

Since we are going to make use of that on other projects we will set this as a reusable Action.

First we will create new repo: https://github.com/JaneDoe/setup-nushell and then create a new action.yml at the root:

# action.yml @ https://github.com/JaneDoe/setup-nushell
name: "Setup Nushell"
description: "Installing Nushell through APT Repositories"
runs:
  using: "composite"
  steps:
    - name: Setup Repositories
      shell: bash
      run: |
        wget -qO- https://apt.fury.io/nushell/gpg.key | \
          sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/fury-nushell.gpg
        echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/fury-nushell.gpg] https://apt.fury.io/nushell/ /" | \
          sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/fury.list

    - name: Installing Nushell
      shell: bash
      run: |
        sudo apt update &&  apt install -y nushell

Once you finish pushing action.yml to the new repo JaneDoe/setup-nushell you need to also set a tag. Recommend using semver pattern

git tag v0.1.0
git push --tags`

Now we can adjust our original Workflow:

# .github/workflows/running_ci_routines.yml @ https://github.com/JaneDoe82/my-new-app
name: running ci routines
on: [push]
jobs:
  running_tests:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5

      - uses: JaneDoe82/setup-nushell@v0.1.0

      - name: Running Test Routines
        run: nu testing.nu

How do I use a private repository as an Action?

Navigate to: Settings > Actions > General

and then scroll down to the Access section and select whichever option fits better for your privacy scenario.