I want to run an action to check if my code compiles whenever I push to dev branch. But since my actions are in main it never runs whenever I push to dev branch. I have tried to understand the documentation but it really isn't any help. Here is the code:
name: check-compile
on:
push:
branches:
- dev
There are many ways to run workflow for specific branches.
First option
The one you wrote only work if dev is the default branch, to make it work with other ref/heads you need to add ' around the branch name:
name: check-compile
on:
push:
branches:
- 'dev'
Note: It will only work with this implementation if the workflow .yml file exists on the specific branch.
Second option
You can run your workflow for all push, but perform specific jobs of steps only for specific branches. To do so, you can use the if conditional on the job or the step level:
name: check-compile
on: [push] #to any branch
jobs:
job:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/dev' # run this job only for the dev branch
steps:
...
Third option
You can also filter branches using !, to run the workflow on any branch except the ones informed:
on:
push:
branches:
- '*'
- '!master'