Create builds/releases using Github Actions?

[Derpitron]

Github Actions is well suited to the kind of compilation tasks which is needed to build font files and releases, and it can also handle publishing the releases automatically with semantic versioning.

Using Github Actions would free up valuable processing power/time from the developer's systems, and relieves the mental load as well; the developers need not have to juggle around managing the built font files, then uploading them to Github releases, then tagging them properly.

It's easy to set up and free, it's just a matter of configuring the build workflow, and having it output the artifacts needed. It could also allow for creating separate archives, like an archive just for Inter Text, an archive for Inter Display, etc.

[rsms]

That’s a good idea. I’ve setup actions to build & upload artifacts before. One thing that’s maybe not very user-friendly though is that to download the built fonts you have to know to click the little green checkmark icon next to a commit and then find download links at the end-ish of that page.

It’s possible to create releases, but those require tagging and would cause one tag for every commit.

Maybe it’s possible to create comments on a commit with the download links (automatically in the action)

[Derpitron]

What about specifically designating certain commits as "release" or "pre-release", and triggering the build and release workflow if the commit is release or pre-release?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70377390/is-there-any-way-to-trigger-a-specific-github-action-workflow-by-commit-message

It's possible to read the commit message and trigger the workflow if it has a certain keyword in it, but then this would need you to know if the current state should be built right when you commit.

I think a better way is to have a workflow which can handle building and releasing, but the workflow should be triggered manually by you/other maintainer, so that the tag could be filled in manually instead of the commit hash.

[rsms]

Done.
Example: https://github.com/rsms/inter/actions/runs/3184057741